A Democratic candidate for attorney general of Virginia used a Thursday debate to once again apologize for a series of leaked past text messages where he compared a former Republican colleague to Hitler and said he should be shot.
“I am ashamed, I am embarrassed, and I am sorry,” Jay Jones said during the debate of his messages about Todd Gilbert, the former Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates.
“I am sorry to Speaker Gilbert, I am sorry to his family. I’m sorry to my family and I’m sorry to every single Virginian,” Jones, a former Virginia state lawmaker, continued from the debate stage at the University of Richmond. “I cannot take back what I said, but you have my word that I will always be accountable for my mistakes, and you also have my word that I will spend every waking moment fighting for you.”
In the messages, first reported by National Review, Jones mentioned Gilbert alongside Hitler, fantasized about shooting the Republican, described the speaker’s children as “little fascists,” and said he would “piss on” the graves of certain Republicans when they died.
Jones’s rival candidate, the incumbent Republican Jason Miyares, condemned the texts during the debate.
“Abraham Lincoln said that character is what you do in the dark when no one is watching,” Miyares said in his opening remarks. “But now we know what he was doing in the dark.”
Jones’s comments have received bipartisan criticism and have roiled races across the state.
“The Democrat candidate for AG in Virginia has been fantasizing about murdering his political opponents in private messages,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X earlier this month.
“I'm sure the people hyperventilating about sombrero memes will join me in calling for this very deranged person to drop out of the race,” he added, referring to recent backlash against the White House for making a racist, AI-doctored video of top Democratic leaders amid government shutdown negotiations.
During a debate last week, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger called the messages “abhorrent.”
The outrage over Jones’s texts comes amid wider concerns of the threat of political violence in the U.S., following the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a speaking event in Utah.
Republicans have sought to paint Democrats as the principal cause of political violence in the country, and the administration has launched a crackdown on left-wing groups including Antifa in response.
Studies show that right-wing political violence has claimed more lives in recent decades than attacks by adherents of any other cause, though left-wing attacks are rising.
