“What began as a quiet October Friday in Virginia politics,” reports Markus Schmidt for the Virginia Mercury, “erupted into a full-blown national scandal when screenshots of private, three-year old text messages showing Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones fantasizing about shooting then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert and his children were made public.”
With 280,000 people having already voted in Virginia’s race for attorney general, polls show Jones leading.
“Like all people,” Jones excused himself, “I’ve sent text messages that I regret.”
Have all of us sent texts such as these?
“If those guys die before me,” Jones messaged Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves.”
Jones, who had resigned as a state legislator, was incensed that Speaker Gilbert had offered too strong a public eulogy over the death of a retired Democratic delegate. Apparently, that delegate had committed the unforgivable sin of being a moderate.
Jones boasted that if he had Hitler, Pol Pot and the Virginia House Speaker in a room, and only two bullets, Speaker “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”
In one message, Del. Coyner “chastised Jones” for telling her over the phone how he hoped “Jennifer Gilbert’s children would die” in her arms to make the Speaker change his political views.
“Rather than deny that he had wished death on the children,” National Review explained, “Jones responded by saying, ‘Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.’”
“I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists?” he asked in another text.
To which he answered: “Yes.”
Jay Jones for attorney general? No.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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