"Republicans need to turn down the temperature."
"Republicans need to stop weaponizing government."
How many times have we heard Democrats demand that every Republican, from President Trump down to the local dog catcher, tone down their rhetoric and the supposed weaponization of government in the name of stopping "political violence"?
Far too many times. In the month since TPUSA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk was assassinated for speaking to his political opponents and being effective in doing it. Since that horrible day, Democrats have blamed Republicans -- including Kirk himself -- for our rhetoric inspiring violence.
It is, of course, a lie. Even The Atlantic admitted political violence comes from the Left, and we're watching Leftist riot against ICE in Portland and Chicago. We saw Leftists vandalize Teslas, firebomb Tesla dealerships, and harass Tesla owners.
If Republicans were even a fraction as violent as the Left claims, we'd know, and there would be zero tolerance for it. As it should be. But Democrats, time and again, get a pass for their violent behavior.
Whether it's politicians who think they're above the law (looking at you, Adam Schiff), or the career criminal who is arrested 99 times and serves zero jail time, it seems certain people can (or believe they can) get away with abhorrent behavior.
This weekend, we've seen that with Jay Jones, the Democrat running for Virginia Attorney General. Jones admitted to sending text messages in which he said he would shoot his Republican colleague, VA House Speaker Todd Gilbert. In those texts, he also said he wanted to see Gilbert's children -- who were 5 and 2 years old at the time -- die in their mother's arms to advance Democratic policies like gun control. He referred to those kids as "little fascists."
Approximately 45% of Virginians identify as Republicans. 46.6% of Virginians voted for Donald Trump in the last election. Many of them probably also have children. There is no way Jay Jones would represent these people fairly as Attorney General.
That in and of itself is disqualifying, as Jones's Republican opponent and incumbent VA AG Jason Miyares said.
But the pathology behind Jones's ideology makes the situation so much worse.
Why?
Because Jones was mad that Todd Gilbert spoke kindly of Joe Johnson, Jr., a Democratic colleague who died in 2022. Jones felt the bipartisanship between Johnson and Republicans like Gilbert was unacceptable, and Johnson was a "moderate Democrat."
Jones, who at the time had recently resigned from the state house after a brief stint representing Norfolk, had strong feelings about how the political class was eulogizing recently deceased former state legislator Joe Johnson Jr., a moderate Democrat with a long tenure in Virginia politics. Republican legislators like House Speaker Todd Gilbert had begun making public statements honoring Johnson’s memory and political legacy ...
Around 8 a.m., [on Aug 8, 2022] Jones shared those feelings with his former state legislative colleague, Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner. In a series of text messages obtained by National Review, Jones derided Johnson’s political centrism and scoffed at the “glowing” tributes that were being made in his honor by Republicans in the wake of his death.
“Damn that was for mark,” he wrote to Coyner, suggesting he’d meant to send the texts to someone else. And yet that realization didn’t stop Jones from joking about what “that POS” Gilbert “would say about me if I died.”
“If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, referencing the Republican colleagues who were publicly honoring the deceased Johnson’s memory, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves” to “send them out awash in something.”
This is eye-opening.
To Democrats like Jay Jones, it is no longer acceptable to be collegial with Republicans. It is no longer acceptable to be a moderate Democrat who reaches across the aisle. It's no longer acceptable to be a decent human being who speaks fondly of a deceased colleague regardless of political ideology.
And other Democrats support Jones.
Democratic candidate for the VA House of Delegates, Melody Cartwright, does.
Democrat candidate for Virginia house of delegates 👇🏻
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 6, 2025
Democrats want us and our kids kiIIed.
They aren’t even hiding it anymore. pic.twitter.com/ogmaENtHBe
So do the Virginia Beach Democrats and former Biden aide Neera Tanden, who dismissed the texts as a "private conversation." Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger gave a milquetoast condemnation of Jones's remarks but stopped short of calling on him to drop out of the race.
This wasn't the only time Jones wished death on his political opponents, either. Just today, we learned Jones wanted police officers to die, too.
Del. Carrie Coyner, who shared the 2022 text messages, said she had a conversation with Jones in 2020 over removing qualified immunity for police officers.
"[Jones] 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?’" Conyers told the Virginia Scope. "And I said, ‘I believe that people will get killed. Police officers will get killed.’
Conyers said Jones responded, "Well, maybe if a few of them died, that they would move on, not shooting people, not killing people."
Jones has denied he said this.
But Jones hasn't denied his role in getting a police lieutenant, William K. Kelly III, fired for the "crime" of donating $25 to a Kyle Rittenhouse defense fund. Rittenhouse was the 17-year-old arrested and tried for murder after he shot three protesters during the BLM riots in Kenosha, WI. Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber were killed, and Gaige Grosskreutz was wounded. Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in November 2021.
Jones called the officer's donation "utterly disgusting" and demanded "true accountability in policing." Jones added, "Kelly’s actions have broken the public’s trust and emboldened the worst elements in our society. If we are ever going to repair and strengthen the already fragile relationship between our communities and law enforcement and have a public that truly feels safe, we must root out bias and hatred in our justice system and have true accountability in policing."
A GiveSendGo was set up for Kelly, and it raised over $200,000, a clear indication that most people saw the case for what it was: a witch hunt. In 2023, Kelly resolved his formal grievance with the department.
All of this is a lot to absorb, isn't it? It's almost overwhelming, especially when you realize the implications.
But realize those implications we must.
The Democrat running to be Virginia's top cop not only fantasizes about killing police officers, his political opponents, and Republicans' "little fascist" children, but he also believes you are not entitled to a robust legal defense if he disagrees with your politics, and he will punish anyone who tries to help facilitate such a defense. Every single one of these positions is antithetical to the Constitution and the duties of an Attorney General.
And many of his fellow Democrats support him -- that's a clear sign the way Jones thinks is no longer on the fringes of the party. The so-called "moderate" Democrats are fine with the normalization of political violence and the persecution of private donations.
For people who scream about equality under the law and against tyranny and the weaponization of government, it's clear they believe such things are (D)ifferent when they do it.
That should scare every single one of us.