The Associated Press’s (AP) Steve Peoples and Olivia Diaz want readers to know that the Democrat candidate for Virginia attorney general fantasizing about murdering Republicans pales in comparison to the real story: Republicans “pouncing.”
During a 2022 exchange with Republican Delegate Carrie Coyner, Jay Jones said it would be a “good thing” if his former legislative colleague’s children died.
“Three people, two bullets. [Republican House Speaker Todd] Gilbert, [H]itler, and [P]ol [P]ot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head. Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time,” Jones said in a message. When Coyner pushed back about Jones “[hoping] [J]ennifer Gilbert’s children would die,” Jones confirmed that “Yes,” he was.
“Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy,” Jones continued. Jones also called the Gilberts’ young children “little fascists.”
In any sane world, this would be the story.
Instead, Peoples and Diaz think the real story is that “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.”
The focus wasn’t on what Jones said, but rather how Republicans reacted. Peoples and Diaz describe how “President Donald Trump, like Republicans across Virginia, called for Democratic state attorney general candidate Jay Jones to quit the race over the weekend. The Republican president described Jones as a ‘radical left lunatic’ and sought to link him to former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s Democratic candidate for governor.”
The AP then tried to frame the fallout of this scandal as a campaign challenge rather than a moral and ethical one.
“It was too early on Monday to say what impact the evolving situation may have on the high-stakes governor’s races, if any, but Democrats privately acknowledged that the scandal is at least an unwelcome distraction, in Virginia and beyond — especially as Trump escalates his campaign to cast his political opponents as violent extremists,” Peoples and Diaz wrote, citing “experts” who said Jones’ scandal could “boost what has been a lackluster campaign for Republicans.”
For AP and the rest of the corporate media, the problem isn’t that a Democrat fantasized about political assassination — it’s that Trump might notice such rhetoric and point out that Democrats have a violence problem. It’s not that Republicans are responding to a Democrat’s bloodlust, but rather, according to the AP, that they are exploiting the moment.
That, ultimately, is the entire point of this piece of propaganda. The AP’s framing isn’t about condemning a Democrat candidate’s violent rhetoric — it’s about trying to portray Republicans’ outrage as opportunistic. The scandal itself is an afterthought to the AP. Instead of asking why a major-party nominee fantasized about murdering Republicans and children, the AP tries to cast Republicans as simply milking the story for political gain.
Such a goal was made clear when Peoples and Diaz chose to gloss over Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger’s decision to keep her endorsement of Jones even after giving a half-hearted condemnation of his rhetoric while bemoaning that such condemnation “wasn’t good enough for Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.”
Only in the AP’s world can a Democrat fantasize about murdering Republicans and the scandal somehow belongs to Republicans.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2