Democrat Virginia Attorney General candidate Jay Jones has come under fire for previously saying he wished the former speaker of their state house, a Republican, had “two bullets in his head.” In a recent interview with a local news affiliate, he merely said he wished “that it hadn’t happened” and expressed no plans to drop out of the race.
For context, text messages from 2022 reveal Jones was communicating with another Republican about then-Speaker Todd Gilbert. As much as anyone might write this off as hyperbolic disagreement, the implications of political violence simply can’t be ignored in the wake of attempted assassinations on Donald Trump and the killings of Minnesota legislators earlier this summer or Charlie Kirk earlier this fall.
Speaking to ABC 8 in Virginia, he was pressed on the leaked conversation, asked directly by the host how voters could “trust a man who said something so horrific.” At one point, the disgraced Jones put Gilbert in the same company at Hitler and Pol Pot. A short clip of their larger exchange reached the internet early on October 4th where this back and forth was held.
“A lot of politics is about trust,”the show’s anchor begins asking. “I can think of nothing more horrific than a mother having to hold her dying child. How can Virginians trust a man who said something so horrific, so callously?” he went on to ask. Jones merely replied: “Well, again, I am so deeply, deeply sorry for what I said, and I wish that it hadn’t happened, and I would take it back if I could.”
Noticeably absent from this response was that he abhors political violence or that he wouldn’t feel that way in the future. Instead, the typical political speech could be interpreted as he regrets that the text message was exposed to the world and he wishes it didn’t happen for the sole purpose of it serving as a major distraction.
Indeed, this comment alone should be grounds for immediate vacancy of the nomination. It is hard to imagine a Republican candidate getting off so easy from the media class. And as if his milquetoast apology weren’t bad enough, he has received scant pressure from his colleagues to drop out as well.
Responding to a question from NBC News, Virginia’s Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger – facing her own criticisms for support of the transgender agenda – declined to press Jones to drop out. Instead, she waved away the statement by merely condoning the use of “violent language” in the political realm.
“After learning of these comments earlier today, I spoke frankly with Jay about my disgust with what he had said and texted,” Spanberger wrote to NBC. “I made clear to Jay that he must fully take responsibility for his words. What I have also made clear is that as a candidate — and as the next Governor of our Commonwealth, I will always condemn violent language in our politics.”
Watch the insane backtracking of Jay Jones while talking to ABC:
https://x.com/SteveGuest/status/1974289549296636410
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video