Over the course of the five days after the controversy broke, major CBS, ABC, and PBS broadcast shows refused to discuss Democrat Jay Jones’ violent text messages in which he fantasized about assassinating a political opponent, a new analysis revealed.
NBC alone dedicated a mere 63 seconds to the Virginia attorney general candidates’ texts, Media Research Center’s study of major NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS segments revealed. The analysis included the shows ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, CBS Saturday Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, NBC Today, NBC Sunday Today, ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation, and PBS’s NewsHour. MRC analyzed the programs from Friday, the day the National Review broke the story about Jones’ messages, through Tuesday morning.
National Review revealed messages Jones sent to a former colleague in 2022 in which he said, “Put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.” The hypothetical Jones proposed put Gilbert on par with Hitler and Pol Pot.
In a phone call with the recipient of the texts, Jones also “suggested he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views,” according to a source cited by National Review.
Even a pundit on far-left MSNBC’s Morning Joe, not included in the MRC’s analysis, acknowledged that Jones’ words were “wildly inappropriate” and added that “this guy should do everyone a favor and step out of the race,” saying it is both “the right thing” and would minimize the “political splashback.”
However, as reported by The Federalist, outlets like the Associated Press skirted the issue, focusing on the Republican response rather than Jones’ violent comments, or on the upheaval created in Virginia elections in the cases of The Washington Post and Politico.
Republicans in Virginia, Congress, and the White House have called for Jones to withdraw from the race. While some Democrat lawmakers have condemned Jones’ words, they refuse to pull their support or to call for him to drop out of the race. No U.S. Democrat senators have demanded Jones withdraw, as reported by The Federalist.
Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, D-Va., seemed to cushion their condemnation of Jones’ violent fantasies by saying that “the comments attributed to Jay Jones are appalling, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the person I’ve known” in the case of Sen. Warner, and “contrary to all I’ve known about Jay Jones for decades,” as Sen. Kaine told The Federalist.
Kaine also affirmed his backing for Jones on Monday, saying that the “completely indefensible” statements were “very much out of character,” and that in light of his long history of knowing him, he is “still a supporter of Jay Jones.”
Catherine Gripp is a graduate of Arizona Christian University where she earned a degree in communication and a minor in political science. She writes for The Federalist as a reporting intern.
