It’s time for a fact-check of North Carolina politics. This week we’re looking at claims made about the death of Lynette “Diamond” Hardaway. She and her sister became famous as the online conservative commentators and Trump superfans "Diamond and Silk."
After Hardaway’s death at age 51 at her home in Raeford, outside Fayetteville, was announced Jan. 9, social media users speculated it was due to complications from COVID-19. According to her death certificate, Hardaway actually died from heart disease caused by chronic high blood pressure. Still, claims that Hardaway died because of COVID-19 persist on social media. For more, we turn now to Paul Specht of WRAL.
Marshall Terry: OK, Paul, first, why did some on social media speculate that Hardaway had died from COVID-19 before a cause of death was ever released?
Paul Specht: Well, I think one thing that played a role was former President Donald Trump posting on Truth Social on Jan. 9, the day after her death, saying that it was, quote, "totally unexpected" end quote, and that her, quote, "precious heart just plain gave out," end quote. And after three years of everyone dealing with COVID, our medical community has learned that it can have lots of effects on people, and one of them is myocarditis and other heart problems. And so a lot of people jump to the conclusion that, hey, heart problems, unexpected — Did she have COVID? And without a cause of death being available immediately, they just, sort of, jump to that conclusion.
Terry: Well, did Hardaway's death certificate say anything about COVID-19?
Specht: Well, and that's another reason that these rumors persisted for so long, is that we didn't have a cause of death for two weeks — I say "we" as in the public — until Jan. 23, when the Associated Press obtained the death certificate, which they also shared with us here at WRAL and PolitiFact. It does list multiple contributors to her death, including hypertension, heart disease, high blood pressure, things like that. But it does not mention the coronavirus.
Terry: So why do these claims persist on social media about her dying from COVID-19? And how did her death get so politicized? Is this, sort of, in some ways the inverse or mirror image of people on the right who are skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines?
Specht: I think it's fair to say that when someone dies unexpectedly and there's not an immediate explanation, people on both sides of the political aisle can jump to conclusions, you know? And with COVID in the background, if it's a right-wing person who dies and there's no explanation immediately, people suspect maybe there's a cover-up. Why aren't they telling us why they died? Because they got COVID and they're embarrassed, you know? And on the other side, we see, you know, if someone else dies unexpectedly, you see vaccine skeptics, you know, jump and say, where's the explanation? Maybe it was the vaccine, maybe it's a cover-up. Our political environment right now is so tense, and no one trusts each other. And so then when time goes by and there's no explanation, the finger-pointing begins, right? And we've almost come to expect that. But then once the death certificate came out on Jan. 23 and was reported by the Associated Press, you know, we wondered, OK, will this settle it? And it didn't. We still saw on Twitter and other social media people making light of this woman's death, suggesting she died of COVID. And we at WRAL and PolitiFact felt the need to sort of correct the record and put the facts out there as we know them. Because that's "A" that's our job, and "B," because apparently that information was not getting to people. And this could be a longer conversation about how people consume media or how polarized we are. But as it turned out, even after the Associated Press' report, people were either ignoring it or were not exposed to it. And so that's why we decided to do this fact check. And I think it's important for people to know what the facts are.
Terry: Since Hardaway's death certificate was released, her sister, Rochelle Richardson, also known as Silk, has said that vaccines administered to other people could have affected Hardaway. What exactly did she mean by that? And is there any truth to it?
Specht: No, there's not. There is a theory out there that people who get vaccines administered to them "shed." You can Google that and you'll see a bunch of fact-checks about vaccine shedding. But that is not true. It's not scientifically verified. It's something that PolitiFact has reported on, as well as other outlets.
Terry: So how do you rate these claims that Lynnette Hardaway, the Diamond of Diamond and Silk, died from COVID-19?
Specht: We rate them false. That's based on the evidence that we have. In this case, what we're seeing is people on the left side of the political aisle perpetuating this theory that she died from COVID without any evidence. And it's important to remember that this death certificate was signed off by a doctor. He listed the causes, and COVID was not one of them. So we're dealing with the facts that we have -- that are supported by people in the medical community -- and it honestly leaves us with no other choice but false. And so that's what we went with.
Terry: All right, Paul, thank you.
Specht: Thank you.
