On what would have ordinarily been a quiet Friday in a mostly quiet off-year Virginia statewide election cycle, it emerged that the Democrat who wanted to be Virginia’s top cop — attorney general — thought it might be a good idea to kill some Republicans.
In a piece originally published by conservative outlet National Review, it was revealed that in 2022, Jay Jones — formerly a state legislator, now the attorney general nominee — was not happy that Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert was eulogizing a recently deceased moderate Democrat.
He then wondered in the messages to a Republican state lawmaker what “that POS” Gilbert “would say about me if I died” then went here: “Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”
Just so we’re clear, outside of deaths caused by war, Adolf Hitler and Cambodian dictator Pol Pot are responsible for almost 20 million killings. Todd Gilbert is responsible for praising a moderate Democrat. He gets both bullets, apparently.
Virginia’s other statewide Democratic office-seekers are distancing themselves from Jones, but not enough to demand he quit the race. Outlets like the Associated Press are pulling a Republicans Pounce!™ on the story, meanwhile. (No, seriously, from the open of their Monday report on the controversy, which put what was really important as the lede: “Republicans are seizing on recently unearthed violent rhetoric from Virginia’s Democratic candidate for attorney general in a push to re-shape the state’s governor’s race — and tarnish the Democratic Party nationally — less than a month before Election Day.” Emphasis ours, duh.)
So, fine: Virginia’s wannabe top cop wants to kill a Republican, but Democrats don’t think that’s disqualifying. What about if Virginia’s wannabe top cop wants to kill, um, cops?
Because that’s the latest revelation in a story that wasn’t going to go away. According to the Virginia Scope, a Republican state lawmaker said Monday that Jones “told her in 2020 that if a few police officers died, then maybe they would stop killing people.”
The accusation came from Republican Del. Carrie Coyner.
“Back in 2022, I received a text message, and Jay had sent me the text message, and then he realized immediately it was meant for Mark, and he said sorry,” she said.
“And rather than stop, he continued on talking about Todd Gilbert, and in a way that made me uncomfortable with him — saying that Todd Gilbert should be shot — if he had two bullets, he would use both of them every time on Todd Gilbert, instead of some really monstrous, horrible people in history. I pushed back, and then he called to basically reiterate why Todd Gilbert was such a horrible person on public policy, and why he’s bad for people, and peppering me with questions about ‘name a time when people make actual change on public policy without feeling personal pain,’ and I wouldn’t agree with that.”
Jones then said that if Gilbert’s wife had to experience some of her children dying, she would reconsider her position on gun control, a hot-button topic in the state. After this, they apparently had a text conversation about the phone call.
“You were talking about [hoping] Jennifer Gilbert’s children would die,” Coyner said.
“Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy,” Jones responded.
From the Scope:
When asked what Jones was referencing when he said “I’ve told you this before,” Coyner said it goes back to a heated phone call in 2020 about removing qualified immunity protections for law enforcement. (Qualified immunity protects police officers from civil lawsuits.)
“We had a pretty heated conversation about public policy and pain involving qualified immunity. I served on the Courts Committee for a short period of time,” Coyner said.
“A bill to remove qualified immunity for police officers, which protects police officers from personal liability in their line of duty and their line of work, and he believed that they should not have qualified immunity, and he was trying to convince me to agree with that, and I said, ‘No, police officers have to make a split second decision about whether or not to shoot a gun to protect themselves or protect others. And if they’re having to think about, will this strip my whole family of everything … are they going to be able to make that split-second decision?’
“And I said, ‘I believe that people will get killed. Police officers will get killed.’ And he said, ‘Well, maybe if a few of them died, that they would move on, not shooting people, not killing people.’ And I said, ‘That’s insane.’”
Jones, for his part, said that this conversation never happened. However, it’s not like he either has much credibility on the issue or will face any consequences.
Jones’ statement, per CNN: “I take full responsibility for my actions, and I want to issue my deepest apology to Speaker Gilbert and his family. 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. I cannot take back what I said; I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology. Virginians deserve honest leaders who admit when they are wrong and own up to their mistakes. This was a grave mistake, and I will work every day to prove to the people of Virginia that I will fight for them as attorney general.”
In other words: He takes full responsibility for a statement nobody else was ascribing responsibility to anyone else for, except for doing the only thing that would entail taking full responsibility, which is leaving the race and leaving politics. (Remember, this is from the party that once believed words were violence. Now violent words aren’t even an occasion for dropping out.)
And, as for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger: “After learning of these comments earlier today, I spoke frankly with Jay about my disgust with what he had said and texted. I made clear to Jay that he must fully take responsibility for his words,” she said. Notice there’s no talk in there about him leaving the race, again.
Which raises the question: What precisely is “taking responsibility” for your words or actions in Democrat-land? Admitting that you said them? Saying something about them?
By that measure, I take responsibility for the fact that I just wrote about Jay Jones taking responsibility for his words and the gubernatorial candidate took responsibility for taking responsibility for ensuring Jones took responsibility for his words, which he did by taking responsibility for them. This article takes responsibility for itself. That statement also takes responsibility for my responsibility-taking in the prior thousand or so words, which is a lot of responsibility-taking, and there is more to come that I will take responsibility for, rest assured. Responsibility.
This dude talked about offing the speaker of the Virginia House then apparently said he wanted some cops offed, too. He denies the second; I’m calling for summary judgment based on history here.
As for what will happen next? Presumably, Spanberger will call for more responsibility-taking, Jones will potentially take some responsibility (there are screenshots of text messages that back up part of the Coyner story, just not the cop-dying part), and you’ll see headlines like this from the AP, probably: “Republicans Pounce On AG Candidate Who Wants Live Cops Pounced Upon.”
CNN reported that Jones currently leads incumbent GOP Attorney General Jason Miyares by a 51 percent to 45 percent margin in the latest polling. The only good news from this sad episode is that the longer this assassination-eyed goon stays in the race, the quicker that lead will evaporate.
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