Uprising

by Diamond

  All of these were reasonable things; why was the media making him out to be a monster? We had to wonder.

  So he says, “Say hello.”

  He stood there, y’all, like a father. It was like family, like this man had known us for years.

  That’s exactly how it felt.

  He was so pleasant and genuinely nice that we knew the evil things the media were saying about him were just lies.

  Those were lies. Donald Trump is a down-to-earth person. He fights for the little man—that’s the truth.

  It’s the truth; yes, it is.

  After the veterans’ fundraiser, we went backstage, and that’s when we were able to meet Melania Trump.

  Yes. When we made eye contact, she was just excited to meet us and speak to us. She was so pleasant.

  Yes, she was. She was the most humble, gracious person you ever wanted to meet.

  She wasn’t standoffish either.

  Not at all.

  Shortly after we met the future First Lady, George drove us back to our hotel so we could get back to North Carolina the next day.

  Charleston, South Carolina: Charleston Convention Center, February 19, 2016

  The next rally we attended was the following month, in Charleston, South Carolina. Gurl, that’s when we got so sick.

  Mm-hmm.

  See, we were not used to traveling like that. We were around people who we didn’t know, and we were hugging and loving on them, so we got sick.

  Well, see, we had stopped for something to eat, and while we were sitting there, our fans, people who loved us, came over and began talking to us.

  Yes.

  And one particular guy was sick and told us he was sick.

  He told us he was sick and then started coughing and sneezing hysterically all over the place while we were trying to eat our food.

  Yes. We finally left without eating, it was so horrific.

  After that, sure enough, we got sick.

  We got sick, sick, sick.

  I don’t recall ever having a common cold that made me so sick. First, Silk came down with a sore throat that was so bad that she lost her voice. Then, of course, whatever Silk had, I picked it up.

  Don’t blame it on me. It seemed like that guy might’ve been a rally hopper.

  Yes. I remember seeing him so many times and realizing every time he was around us, we would get sick.

  Hahaha. We really would. I don’t know what type of cold he may have had, but whenever he showed up, we got sick. The last time we saw him, we told our assistant to keep him away, and they kept him away.

  11:21 a.m., April 2016: Time to Pray

  So just switching gears, I remember during this time, back in April 2016, the media was trying to throw shade at candidate Donald Trump by calling him all of these different names. And the Left seemed to be changing rules to cheat him.

  So candidate Trump was running up against Ted Cruz. Well, I remember sitting at my desk, and I’m like, “You know what? It’s time for us to fast and pray.”

  I knew in my heart of hearts that Donald Trump was supposed to be the president. So it was during one of our Table Talk shows on social media that I said I thought it was time for us to have prayer every day, at 11:21 a.m. EST.

  That’s right.

  And so, let me tell you where I got the time from: I was sitting in my office, thinking we needed to have prayer. What is a significant time to remember? Well, it just so happened that I was looking back at a video of when candidate Trump was announcing that he was going to run for president. The video had the timestamps on it of the different time zones as Donald Trump was appearing in them. So it was on June 16, 2015, at 11:21 a.m., EST, when he announced he was running for President of the United States. I wrote that time down and said, “That will be the time that we will have prayer.”

  That’s exactly what you said.

  A lot of people wanted us to change the time. Do you remember that?

  Yes, I do. But once you have something written in stone, stick with it. You can’t be like everybody else; do what you do, and do it your way.

  That time was chosen for a specific reason because that time in history can never be changed.

  Mm-hmm.

  Okay, so we put that video out on April 12, 2016. Y’all, I remember the next day, on April 13, 2016, Megyn Kelly actually went to Trump Tower to clear the air with candidate Trump. Then, a week or so later, Ted Cruz dropped out of the race, and Donald J. Trump became the presidential nominee.

  That lets you know, prayer changes things.

  Yes, it does.

  I don’t care what anybody tries to tell you, prayer will change some things. Sometimes it just changes us and strengthens us to handle our situation. However, prayer can also make the power company personnel have compassion and allow you to keep heat and lights on in the cold winter months.

  That’s right.

  Prayer can cause the mechanic who fixed your car to extend a payment plan until the end of the month when you can pay for it.

  Mm-hmm. I recall saying, “We believe in the power of prayer.”

  That’s how we were raised. We believed in the power of prayer; we believed from the very beginning that Donald J. Trump was going to be President of the United States; we believed he was called to reverse the curse of past leaders who didn’t have the people’s interests at heart.

  Yes. We had faith.

  We felt so sure, it was like it had already happened. F-A-I-T-H: “Feel As If the Thing Has Happened.”

  That’s right. Feel as if it’s already happened. That’s exactly what we did.

  Lessons Learned

  As were travelling around in 2016, openly promoting Donald Trump, an interesting media buzz dominated the headlines—you know how the media likes to spin their narrative; they’re so nasty. Apparently, candidate Donald Trump did not have women who were going to vote for him; he had no support from American women.

  Mm-hmm.

  And we looked at one another and said, “Well, that’s a lie because we’re women.”

  Mm-hmm.

  How could they say women didn’t want to vote for Donald Trump, when women were showing up at the rallies?

  So people started writing us about starting a Women for Trump movement, but we really couldn’t manage it at that time due to our full schedule. So when we finally said we would try to start something, we received an email from a lady who wanted to do something just like that.

  Right. We received an email from a lady who also wanted to do something when it came to women who support Trump. The event was taking place in Virginia.

  Right. She already had the event and location, so she just wanted us to show up and speak at the event.

  You live and you learn is all I’ll say. Everything, always, is a lesson that God wants you to learn.

  That’s right. Oh, what a lesson we learned.

  Now, in 2016, we made a lot of appearances for free, so we weren’t charging for this particular event. We drove to Virginia and got a hotel room, and then we went to a meeting at the facilitator’s home.

  The same lady who emailed us.

  Right. So when we got there, she really insisted that we stay in her home.

  That’s right. She wanted us to stay at her house.

  We said, “Oh, no; we’ll stay at the hotel.”

  She responded sincerely with something like, “No, you don’t need to be in that nasty, dusty hotel; you need to stay right here at my house with me.”

  Mm-hmm.

  So I’m like, well, okay, maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad because it was a beautiful home.

  It was a beautiful home.

  She even called the hotel to let them know we were going to cancel our room because we were staying with her.

  She was very pushy; this was what she was going to do.

  Right. No worries, though. We went back to the hotel, we packed up our things, and we returned to her house because we were going to stay with her for the next couple o
f days.

  Right.

  Well, she got us settled in, and she put Silk and me in a room that had its own bathroom.

  That’s right. We were comfortable because it felt like we were sharing a hotel room.

  When we got downstairs, she had fixed us breakfast. Now, breakfast to Diamond and Silk, y’all, is scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, grits, biscuits and gravy, pancakes, etc. Y’all, it’s one of our three favorite meals of the day.

  Hahaha. Yes, and don’t forget the crispy toast with extra butter.

  There on the table, staring back at me, was one, big, Polish sausage and a runny, sunny-side up egg. Now, y’all, Diamond does not like her eggs runny. I like my eggs scrambled to cook out any possible salmonella.

  So when she set that plate down, I knew it was food, but I wasn’t going to eat it.

  Hahaha.

  Of course, she noticed that I didn’t eat it. So what she did was wrap my plate up and put it in the refrigerator, just in case I wanted to eat it later. Now, I don’t care how many times you wrap it up—you can wrap it up and put it in a gift box with a bow on top—I’m still not going to eat it.

  Hahaha. Yes.

  So that’s breakfast. Now, I’m noticing that daylight is turning into darkness. It’s becoming night, and there’s no sign of dinner. Now, you have to understand, Diamond and Silk are used to eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks too. We don’t miss meals.

  Hell, no, we don’t.

  And back in 2016, we were big.

  Huge.

  We didn’t miss a meal.

  We don’t have a problem with eating.

  Now, it’s time to leave for the event, and we still haven’t eaten. Thankfully, they had little hors d’oeuvres, so we grabbed us some little mini bites, and that was the only meal we had.

  A lot of times, a dinner is scheduled for after the event, so we thought maybe this event was planned that way and we’d go out for a meal afterwards.

  Nope. We went back to her house, we got showered, and I had to pray myself to sleep because I was so hungry. You know how people cry themselves to sleep? I had to pray myself to sleep because my stomach was making so much noise, growling for food. I was hoping prayer would shut it up so it wouldn’t wake Silk.

  Well, hell, I was hoping my growling belly wouldn’t wake you up either.

  I had never gone to bed hungry.

  So I’m thinking, “It’s a fresh start, a new day, a new morning. We’re going to get us a nice breakfast.” In my mind, I was thinking about pancakes, bacon, cheesy eggs, a little syrup on the side, and maybe a glass of juice and a glass of ice water.

  When we got up, our hostess was down in the basement, giving a course on dancing, and there was nothing but coffee. She eventually bopped up the steps with a SlimFast. There was no breakfast. I looked at Silk and said, “If we don’t get something to eat, we’re going to die of starvation.” Hahaha.

  Hahaha. We’ll be like dry bones in the valley.

  You cannot invite two black women who have weight on them to stay in a house without having any food available.

  That’s right.

  When I have guests, I like to have fruits, snacks, and a variety of food.

  Well, especially when guests are going to be staying with you, I’m thinking it’s pretty standard to at least have dinner.

  At the very least. When I politely inquired about some breakfast, y’all know what she told me?

  What did she tell you?

  That the egg and sausage from the day before was still in the refrigerator. Like I wanted to eat that.

  She had the nerve to say some mess like that.

  Well, we got out of there as fast as we could and headed to the nearest Cracker Barrel.

  Hahaha. We sure did.

  I had pancakes, meatloaf, ordered it up.

  Yes. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  And we tried to eat as much as we could, just in case we couldn’t eat again that day.

  Then we went by the Family Dollar store and got chips and snacks, hahaha.

  Yes. Just in case. She may starve herself, but we weren’t going to starve with her. So that was our lesson on not staying with people. Stay in a hotel. A lot of times, our fans—and we love them—they may want us to stay with them and cook us up a meal, make us comfortable. The thing is everybody may not have the same routine, or they may drink nothing but SlimFast, and it’s more comfortable for everyone to have their own freedom with those things.

  So we ended up doing the event, and the event was very successful. As a matter of fact, the same lady called us to do another event or two.

  That’s right.

  We went and did those events, but we stayed in a hotel.

  Hahaha. It only took us that one time to learn that lesson.

  We had to be careful during that time because there seemed to be people all around us with hidden agendas.

  Yes. Lots of hidden agendas.

  It was like this lady was trying to get candidate Trump’s attention, and we didn’t operate like that. The one thing that we weren’t going to do was exploit candidate Trump.

  Yes. Remember, we had several experiences with the opportunists trying to exploit us to get next to candidate Trump. This felt the exact same way.

  Yes. This lady started acting as if she spoke for us. I remember Silk had to get her straight, that she wasn’t to speak on our behalf.

  Yes, I sure did.

  Somebody wanted us at an event, and she made it her business to call them to tell them what we like, what we don’t like, and how they should handle their event.

  Right. Now, this was after we had removed ourselves from her.

  Right. She wanted to prance us around as if we were some type of sideshow.

  Mm-hmm.

  And when she got in front of her friends, she was like, “Y’all do this; y’all do that.” I had to stop her one day, and I basically said, “We’re not doing any of that. Stop telling us what to do.” Y’all, I was at my breaking point.

  Right. It seemed like she was trying to act as if she was our agent or manager, and she was not. That’s when I basically told her, “You don’t own us.”

  Right. The hair started standing up on our necks, y’all, and we got as far away from her as we could. She was not our manager, and she wasn’t going to use us to get to candidate Trump.

  That’s right. We weren’t going to exploit him, and we weren’t going to let anybody exploit us to get to him. That was the bottom line.

  So it didn’t surprise us when we received an email informing us that she claimed to have discovered us and that we had lived in her home for weeks. That was a damn lie. If we had lived in her home for weeks, we would have died of starvation.

  Bradenton, Florida: Women United 4 Trump, June 25, 2016

  We finally decided to do our own event. We pondered the name, as we always do; Silk investigated, and we eventually named our event Women United 4 Trump.

  Mm-hmm.

  The slogan “Women for Trump” was already taken, so we wanted something that would stand out, something specific, something unique.

  Right.

  Now, I have to add this: Some people are always trying to see what they can get from you. There are those so skilled at latching on that, if you’re not paying attention, they’ve done it to you and you don’t even know what happened.

  You can be unaware that it’s even happening.

  So we posted on social media that the event would be in Bradenton, Florida, and people from that area started contacting us, asking what they could do to help us with getting this event together.

  Exactly.

  Well, what happened was, two young ladies hijacked the event. They wanted to act as if they were our agents; they said they were going to make us famous. We were like, “Well, wait a minute, we’re already famous. We became famous back in December 2015 when we went on candidate Trump’s stage.”

  And the stuff that they were talking about, we weren’t inte
rested in. They were supposed to be helping us put together an event.

  Right. We weren’t interested in becoming more famous. We weren’t interested in them doing anything to make us bigger. We wanted to put on this event, Women United 4 Trump.

  Sometimes it’s hard to relinquish control, and these are some of the reasons why we’re all in the mix as to what’s going on.

  Yes. So we needed a location, a time, programs, and to advertise it to those who were likely to be interested in it.

  Well, it was getting close to the date, and we were thinking we had all of it in order. All of a sudden, there’s some rift going on.

  This was in May 2016.

  Then people started saying that they’d heard the event was canceled. Y’all, they had deliberately spread rumors that the event was no longer going to be held.

  Right. They tried to sabotage it because we wouldn’t go along with their plan. They wanted their people to provide food and drinks to our guests, but they didn’t want to give us a cut of the profit.

  That’s exactly what they tried to do. They tried to make us pay for everything while they made a profit off of the event.

  During all of this, Rose Tennent, a conservative talk radio host, had an event that we were invited to speak at. It was a beautiful event, and it was packed out, so we did what we do.

  Yes, we did.

  After the event, we were gathering our things, getting ready to go, saying our goodbyes, and we couldn’t help but notice a young woman who was there at the back table, selling our merchandise.

  Right.

  That’s when we met Tressie Ham. We were taken a bit off guard at our first introduction, but she came to be a true angel in our lives.

  First, she mentioned that she was an event planner.

  Mm-hmm.

  When she said that, Diamond and I were like, wow. Then she basically said, “What do you need? Tell me; I can get it done; I can make it happen. I feel like I’m supposed to be here to help you.”

  Yes.

  So we spilled everything out to her, and she told us in so many words, “Don’t worry about anything; I’ve got this.”

  Mm-hmm. We told her about how the event had been hijacked and how the people involved had tried to undermine our endeavors.