2025 Elections

… This means that what’s in Jay Jones’s heart is simple but shocking: Murder.

Equally shocking has been the response from other Virginia Democrats, including the top of the ticket for statewide office, gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger.

Spanberger, who earlier this election cycle told her supporters to “let your rage fuel you,” has refused to step away from Jones or call for his removal from the ticket.

The same goes for just about every other major liberal politician and political group in Virginia. Sure, they’ve offered mealy-mouthed caveats about such language being “unacceptable,” but then they immediately pivot into pointing fingers at  Donald Trump and doubling down on their endorsement of Jones.

As Mollie Hemingway from The Federalist insightfully suggested, “perhaps the reason every single Democrat is standing behind Virginia Democrat AG candidate Jay Jones, who fantasized about Republicans getting assassinated and their children dying, is because they more or less agree with him.”

She’s not wrong. I said it’s “shocking” that the other leftists in Virginia would stand by their comrade, but let’s be honest, it really isn’t. This is who the left is.

For the left, who trace their ideological roots back to the bloody guillotines of the French Revolution and through the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, the presence of violence in their political quest for eternal power isn’t a bug — it’s a feature.

The Democratic nominee in the Virginia Attorney General’s race is on the defensive after text messages sent in 2022 were revealed, showing Jay Jones fantasizing about the murders of a state GOP lawmaker and his children.

Jones has received considerable backlash from Republicans over texts in which he said that he’d like to give then-House of Delegates Speaker Todd Gilbert “two bullets to the head.”

Jones also suggested that Gilbert might change his position on gun control if he were to witness the murder of his own children.

While Jones has since offered a public apology to Gilbert for his comments, saying he takes “full responsibility for my actions,” and adding,  “Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach. I am embarrassed, ashamed and sorry.”

“I have reached out to Speaker Gilbert to apologize directly to him, his wife Jennifer, and their children,” Jones wrote, “I cannot take back what I said; I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology.”

Jones also faced harsh criticism over comments made in a 2020 conversation about removing qualified immunity from police in which Del. Carrie Coyner warned Jones that, without legal protection, police officers would get killed.

The scandal whereby Jay Jones, the Democrat nominee in the Virginia attorney general race, sent graphic text messages describing his desire to assassinate a political opponent says much about our current political culture. Beyond how some describe “violent” policies to justify violent actions against their adversaries, it also reflects the practical realities of the way states administer elections.

The candidates at the top of Virginia’s Democrat ticket, gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger and lieutenant governor nominee Ghazala Hashmi, have, as of this writing, refused to demand that Jones remove himself from the ticket. One potential reason for their reluctance to do the obvious “right thing”: It would disenfranchise tens of thousands of Virginia voters.

Spanberger has condemned her ticket mate’s violent rhetoric, but didn’t ask him to leave the ticket. Instead, she’s redirected her messaging to focus on the government shutdown, seizing on the opportunity to slam Republicans on a Trump administration memo threatening to withhold back pay from furloughed federal employees.