Two exultant, full-throated voices in support of President Trump apparently have been banished from the airwaves of Fox News, Fox Business Network, and the Fox Nation subscription video streaming service that is endlessly promoted in place of advertising during commercial breaks on the cable news channels. The last time the duo uploaded commentary to Fox Nation was April 7, but no official Fox voice even whispered a word of their eviction from the largest conservative television platforms.

YouTube screen grab.

But over the weekend, Oliver Darcy of CNN noted their absence on Twitter, and yesterday, Lachlan Cartwright and Justin Baragona of the painfully progressive Daily Beast broke the story of their expulsion.

Fox News has cut ties with MAGA vlogging superstars Diamond & Silk, who had contributed original content to the network's streaming service Fox Nation since shortly after its late 2018 launch.

The sudden split comes after the Trump-boosting siblings have come under fire for promoting conspiracy theories and disinformation about the coronavirus. "After what they've said and tweeted you won't be seeing them on Fox Nation or Fox News anytime soon," a source with knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast.

After rising to prominence during the 2016 election, Lynette "Diamond" Hardaway and Rochelle "Silk" Richardson leveraged their newfound celebrity into regular sycophantic appearances on Fox News, resulting in President Donald Trump raving about their performances, featuring them at rallies, and treating them as "senior advisers."

The social-media personalities were eventually tapped to provide weekly videos for Fox Nation after it launched as a subscription-based online video network. Their episodes, essentially 5–7 minute distillations of their freeform live-streams, appeared like clockwork on the streaming service until earlier this month. (snip)

Prior to this month, the duo never missed a week posting episodes since December 2018.

The lively duo seem to have been very popular with Fox viewers, adding a distinctive brand of enthusiasm to the talking head menagerie at the News Corp outlets.  I found them bringing a smile to my face whenever I would hear from them on air.  Their cadences and responsiveness to each other had a distinctively African-American flavor, and I often thought they must be making those who regard the black vote as the property of the Democrat party quite nervous.  

I don't think anyone regarded them as investigative reporters.  They are polemicists in the best tradition of that mode of discourse.  The bill of particulars against them, according the Daily Beast, includes "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" about the coronavirus.

Diamond & Silk have used their heavy social-media presence to be at the forefront of right-wing misinformation about the COVID-19 outbreak. For instance, during their March 30 livestream, the duo claimed that the number of American coronavirus deaths has been inflated to make Trump look bad.

In fairness, the practice of attributing any death of a person with the coronavirus to the virus itself can be considered an inflation of the death toll.  But other comments could be called conspiracy theorizing because that word was explicitly employed:

"What I need to know is how many people have passed away in New York, and what I need to know is: Who has the bodies?" Diamond asked. "I need for somebody that does investigative work to call the morgues. To call the funeral homes. We need to know, because I don't trust anything else that comes out of his mouth now... Something's not right here. Something is off here."

She added: "Is this being deliberately spread? Look, I'm not being a conspiracy theorist, this is real, but I'm asking my own questions. What the hell is going on?"

Silk, meanwhile, baselessly asserted that the disease was "man-made" and "engineered," wondering aloud if there was a "little deep-state action going on behind the scenes." She also questioned whether the World Health Organization had a "switch" to "turn this virus on and off?"

Fox News appears to be highly sensitive about accusations of spreading "misinformation" about the pandemic, perhaps cowed by the "blood on their hands" rhetoric that lefties have employed (only against conservatives, never about Nancy Pelosi urging partying in S.F. Chinatown).  Trish Regan of FBN already appears to have lost her gig over similar concerns over raising questions about the origins of the pandemic.  Lefty media can barely contain themselves with joy over the split, and it doesn't take a genius to foresee racial grievance-mongers preparing to castigate the network over too few black voices in the future.  

Perhaps picking up on the story from CNN's Darcy, President Trump slammed Fox News over the weekend.  Via Breitbart:

President Trump on Sunday slammed Fox News' coverage and recent hires and criticized former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who is a member of the Fox Corp. board of directors.

"Fox keeps on plugging to try and become politically correct," the president tweeted. "They put RINO Paul Ryan on their Board. They hire "debate questions to Crooked Hillary fraud Donna Brazile (and others who are even worse)."

"Fox News just doesn't get what's happening!" he added. "They are being fed Democrat talking points, and they play them without hesitation or research."

Unquestionably, this move will cost the duo dearly.  They have a book coming out in August and will be unable to promote it on Fox airwaves.  Perhaps OAN or Newsmax TV or another broadcast platform will make them an offer, for they do have a following.  But as Bill O'Reilly painfully knows, nothing can compare to the mass audience of conservatives that Fox News boasts.  

Fox News has let it be known that its official ties to Diamond & Silk were limited to licensing their content for Fox Nation.  They have never been paid contributors and appeared as unpaid guests when on FNC and FBN.