Donald Trump is posting on the interwebs about Jay Jones, the Democratic Party nominee for attorney general, which is not surprising – even as it’s true that Trump has no moral high ground to tsk-tsk about anybody else.
Anyway, here we go.
“It has just come out that the Radical Left Lunatic, Jay Jones, who is running against Jason Miyares, the GREAT Attorney General in Virginia, made SICK and DEMENTED jokes, if they were jokes at all, which were not funny, and that he wrote down and sent around to people, concerning the murdering of a Republican Legislator, his wife, and their children,” Trump began his Sunday post.
“Abigial Spanberger, who is running for Governor, is weak and ineffective, and refuses to acknowledge what this Lunatic has done. Even Democrats are saying it is ‘RESIGNATION FROM CAMPAIGN’ TERRITORY.
“Democrat Jay Jones should drop out of the Race, IMMEDIATELY, and the People of Virginia must continue to have a GREAT Attorney General in Jason Miyares who, by the way, has my Complete and Total Endorsement — JASON WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
Fact check: where do we begin
First: not true that this bit about Jones “has just come out” – we reported on the story on Friday, which is two days ago, but Trump had been radio silent since Tuesday, leading some to speculate that he’s maybe undergoing chemo treatments for cancer.
Second: Jones did not write the “jokes,” as Trump described them, down and send them around to people. The awful observations from Jones were texts to a former House Republican colleague, Carrie Coyner, in 2022; Coyner reportedly forwarded the texts to Todd Gilbert, who was the subject of Jones’s ire, and they were shared far and wide from there.
Third: the first I heard of any of this was from Spanberger, whose campaign team sent out a press statement on Friday afternoon putting Jones on blast.
To wit:
“After learning of these comments earlier today, I spoke frankly with Jay about my disgust with what he had said and texted. I made clear to Jay that he must fully take responsibility for his words. What I have also made clear is that as a candidate — and as the next governor of our Commonwealth, I will always condemn violent language in our politics.”
Fourth: “even Democrats” are calling for Jones to step down.
Ahem, I’m literally the only Democrat to go public with that sentiment.
ICYMI
- Immediately, if not sooner | Jay Jones needs to end his attorney general campaign
- Dem AG nominee Jay Jones releases new statement on Todd Gilbert texts
- Mailbag | Counterpoint on Jay Jones: ‘These texts have been floating around for years’
I’m getting emails from Dems who are telling me they agree with me, and also begging me not to use their names in any reporting, for fear of blowback, but that’s it, on that front.
Which means: somebody on Team Trump told the geezer about my column.
Shudder that thought.
Fifth: Jason Miyares is awful, but he’s awful in a way that benefits Trump, which is why Trump would offer his complete and total endorsement.
Reality check: Jay Jones ain’t going anywhere
The timing of this news getting out is obviously not coincidental to early voting in Virginia already being well under way.
People have been voting here for three weeks now; there’s no removing Jay Jones from the ballot, given that.
The idea of leaving his name on the ballot as a placeholder for a surrogate is too complicated to actually work.
The only thing Virginia Democrats can do is what they’re doing – Spanberger and the nominee for lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hashmi, need to continue efforts to distance themselves so that the stink of this doesn’t get on them.
Fallout
This is far from being a momentum shift in the Republicans’ direction.
The responses I’m getting from Democrats is to the effect that, we still have to vote for Jones, while holding our noses, because Miyares is not an option.
Might it motivate MAGA voters who were on the fence about voting for a ticket headed by a Black immigrant from Jamaica, with a gay Nazi porn-loving man running for lieutenant governor, and the son of a Cuban refugee running for a second term as attorney general?
I dunno.
MAGA voters tend not to be early voters, so they’d have to be reminded who Jay Jones is, and what he said three years ago, a month from now.
A lot is going to happen in the next four weeks – most notably, at some point in the next four weeks, the House of Representatives is going to vote to release the Epstein files, which, when they’re finally made public, will open up a can of worms that may change everything we’re thinking about everything politically in the here and now.
I’m good with where I am on this
I don’t want Jason Miyares back running the attorney general’s office for another four years, and using that post to file frivolous lawsuits and amicus briefs in our names on behalf of Trump and the MAGAs.
I guess that means, I have to vote for Jay Jones.
Yeah, ewww.
I haven’t examined this, but maybe there’s a way not to seat him after he wins and is certified, or to swear him in, then remove him from office, in favor of an appointee and a special election in 2026.
He does not have my trust, not so much for the content of his texts, which are reprehensible – but to me, the bigger issue is, he knew that these texts were on the phones of everybody who is anybody in Republican politics in Richmond, and he ran for attorney general again anyway.
I endorsed him in his primary race with Shannon Taylor, the Henrico County prosecutor now running for Congress in the First District in the 2026 cycle, because I liked how Jones was presenting himself, as a progressive clean energy advocate.
Obviously, if these texts referencing Todd Gilbert had surfaced in the spring, we’re not having this conversation right now.
Jay Jones let his naked personal ambition put us at risk of having another four years of Jason Miyares, and who knows, impact the governor’s race as well.
May he soon join Ralph Northam and Justin Fairfax in the footnotes of Virginia political history going forward.
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Chris Graham
