Debra J. Saunders
"Arlington GOP Chairman Matthew Hurtt noted that a recent poll showed Jones up. “I’m not a poll denier, but I will say, since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it’s hard to peg who are likely voters.” Kirk’s willingness to mix it up stands in sharp contrast to Jones’s shoot-‘em-in-the-head remarks." . . .
"In a better world, Democrats would be running at full speed away from Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee in the Virginia attorney general race. As the National Review reported Oct. 3, in 2022, Jones, a former lawmaker, actually fantasized about killing Todd Gilbert, the then-Republican Speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, because Gilbert had praised a recently deceased moderate Democrat lawmaker.
"In Jay Jones’s world, civility is a capital offense.
"In the 2022 texts Jones exchanged with a former colleague, Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner, he volunteered that if he had two bullets and could use them against Gilbert, Hitler, and/or Pol Pot, “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”
" 'Jay, please stop,” Coyner replied.
"But he did not stop.
"Jones also offered that he believed Gilbert and his wife, Jennifer, are “evil” and “breeding little fascists.” The National Review also reported that Jones wrote that he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her child die in her arms to see how parents feel when their children are victims of gun violence. He wrote, “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
"So if Jones, 36, actually is elected to be Virginia’s top lawman, he would be the rare statewide officeholder who won’t only wish for awful things to happen to Republicans — but also to their children.
"No surprise. Jason Miyares, the Republican incumbent AG, told Fox News that Jones “is wholly disqualified for this office. Because when I took this office, I swore an oath not to a political party but to protect all Virginians — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.”
"Miyares did not say what I can’t help but think — that he, Miyares, is not an out-of-control nut job, unlike Jones, who is.
"This is where some readers might mention Donald Trump’s outrageous statements over the years. Point taken, but the media reported on Trump’s crude rhetoric about immigrants ad nauseam. So voters knew what they were getting and were free to interpret his statements for themselves.
"There has been little mention of the Jones story from major networks, other than Fox News.
