Former Biden Adviser Blows Off Despicable Jay Jones Texts: ‘A Private Conversation’

An adviser for former President Joe Biden counts herself among the Democrats blowing off the despicable texts sent by the party’s nominee to serve as attorney general in Virginia: Jay Jones.

Tanden joined a Sunday morning panel discussion on NBC’s “Meet the Press” just 48 hours after texts Jones sent in 2022 — in which he’d advocated for the murder of then-state House Speaker Todd Gilbert — went viral, and she argued that because the text conversation was supposed to remain private, it should not matter.

WATCH:

BONKERS. Neera Tanden excuses Virginia Democrat AG candidate Jay Jones calling for the assassination of a Republican leader and his kids as just merely just a “private conversation.”

Utterly disgraceful. ????????????????
pic.twitter.com/N5KEyFZHPU

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 5, 2025

Marc Short, who served as chief of staff for former Vice President Mike Pence, was the first to mention Jones — and he did so in the context of the Democrats who’d been pearl-clutching over memes that featured House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) with a fake mustache and a sombrero.

“Can we stop with the pearl-clutching about the mean tweets and the sombrero tweets?” he asked. “This week it came to light that a Democrat candidate for attorney general in the state of Virginia called for the assassination of a political opponent, called for the assassination of that political opponent’s family, and there’s not one national Democrat calling for him to step aside — not one! It’s disgraceful.”

Host Kristen Welker flipped the question to Tanden, noting that the story was likely to only get bigger.

“I mean, I absolutely think people should criticize that, 100%,” Tanden began. “I think it was a private conversation he had, but still awful and disgusting … it should be condemned, but then we should condemn that, but then you should condemn when the president calls the Democratic Party the ‘party of satan.'”

Short and Tanden talked over each other for a few minutes before Short broke through, pointing out once again that “not one Democrat” had stepped up to publicly condemn Jones for the texts.

“The fact that not one Democrat has stood up when he called for a political assassination in this moment of political violence is crazy,” he declared.