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Democratic candidate for Virginia attorney general Jay Jones canceled a fundraiser scheduled for Thursday night in the wake of backlash he has faced over past text messages in which he fantasized about putting “two bullets” in the head of a Republican colleague.
The fundraiser was planned to be held at the home of author David Baldacci, but donors expected to attend reportedly received a memo that their contributions would be refunded since the event will be canceled, a person familiar with the matter told Axios.
The canceled fundraiser suggests the Jones campaign could still be in crisis repair mode after news of his violent rhetoric, which even fellow Virginia Democrats running alongside Jones have condemned. However, those same Virginia Democrats have stopped short of calling for Jones to exit the race.
On Tuesday, in a new campaign advertisement titled “Two bullets,” Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears blasted her Democrat opponent, former Virginia member of Congress from the state’s seventh congressional district, Abigail Spanberger, for failing to explicitly call for Jones to bow out of the race.
“Jay Jones says he wants to put two bullets in a political opponent,” the ad starts out, before pivoting to Spanberger saying, “Let your rage fuel you.” The narrator then comes back and begins citing headlines that “Jones says he hopes an opponent’s children die,” before, again, highlighting Spanberger’s “rage” comments.
“Abigail Spanberger continues to support Jones,” the ad’s narrator continues. “She stands with him, not us.”
Jones’ opponent, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, released his own massive $1.5 million ad buy in response to Jones’ text messages as well.
The text messages came from Jones in 2022, as he was attempting to describe a hypothetical situation about who he would kill if Jones had a gun with just two bullets and there were three people standing in front of him.
“Three people, two bullets,” the text messages read. “Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones wrote, referring to then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert. He added: “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”
The surfaced text messages from 2022 come at a time of heightened sensitivity to inflammatory and violent political rhetoric following the assassination of Charlie Kirk and two attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump.
Even Democrats have warned – in the wake of Kirk’s recent assassination – that “violent words precede violent actions” and “we should have a culture of condemning any rhetoric that glorifies violence.”
Jones did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on this story. Representatives for Miyares declined to comment.
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this report.
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