What Comes Next for the ‘Diamond and Silk’ Media Empire?

Ineitha Lynette Hardaway—better known as “Diamond” from the pro-Trump broadcasting duo “Diamond and Silk”—passed away this week, leaving the future of the pair’s popular act in limbo.

In this week’s episode of Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill speculate on what comes next for “Silk”—who was never really the group’s frontman, so to speak.

“Their whole schtick was that Diamond would talk a lot, and then Silk was always there to say, ‘Yep, mm-hmm, Tell it Diamond,’” Sommer said. “Diamond was kind of the main talker.”

Enter Roger Stone—right wing operative and self-described “dirty trickster”—who within an hour of Diamond’s death being announced had offered up his services as a replacement host for the pair’s show, which had been airing on pillow millionaire and 2020 Big Lie dead-ender Mike Lindell’s website.

Stone even thought to give himself first billing on the show’s name, tweeting—then deleting—his request for Silk to team up for a project called “Stone & Silk.”

“Stone never misses a trick in terms of a chance to promote himself,” Sommer said.

“That's exactly what we need—a Roger Stone podcast to fill the void,” Weill added.

Then, the pair tackle Brazil’s own Capitol riot, which came nearly two years to the day after Jan. 6.

In terms of pure aesthetics, the two scenes were incredibly reminiscent of each other: “They had the flags, they had the marching groups, they had the people walking through government chambers, trashing things,” Weill said. But even as this was all going on, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been camped out in Florida at the home of an MMA star, signing autographs and meeting with American fans of his Trumpian governing style.

The state has become a new nexus for the world’s various right-wing movements in recent years, according to Fever Dreams guest and The Daily Dot political reporter Claire Goforth—and it appears Bolsonaro is angling to stay there and trade on his popularity with the MAGA base rather than face the music back at home.

“I wouldn’t even say it’s a melting pot, I would say it’s like a magnet or just a giant suction that’s pulling all these right-wing figures to Florida,” Goforth said. “And while this may feel like a recent development to us who are following it these past few years, Florida actually has a very long history of attracting extremist figures.”

Another right-wing Brazilian, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) is also garnering headlines with an eye-popping list of biographical lies—and the Fever Dreams hosts have some predictions about how the Republican Party is going to deal with the obvious public relations nightmare that is his tenure.

“It seems like this week, now that the dust has settled over the House speaker’s race, we’re sort of headed into the big Republican brush-off: ‘Yeah, get over it. He’s a pathological liar, whatever, who cares?”

Listen, and subscribe, to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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