Oct. 13, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: The recently revealed messages Jay Jones sent to Carrie Coyner are certainly upsetting. The response to them, however, has shown more about Republican inconsistency and hypocrisy than the messages do about Mr. Jones. Jay Jones is a father and husband and the son of parents whose combined years of service to this state exceed four decades. As all of us have, Jones said something in a moment of anger and frustration that he now deeply regrets.
I may be able to take Trump and other Republicans seriously on this if they reacted the same way in 2020 when Joe DiGenova said on live television that he wanted to see Chris Krebs “drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.” Krebs’ crime? As the chief cybersecurity official in the first Trump administration, he refused to entertain MAGA’s outlandish election lies.
One might see how incensed Republicans are over the Jones texts and assume they were just as mad back then, but Trump was mum on the DiGenova comments. Mr. DiGenova received no backlash from the party that now wants Jay Jones’ head. Do Republicans care about violent political speech or is it just a convenient talking point when they are losing badly to Democrats?
Until Republicans can find the backbone they dropped sometime around 2016, I will still be voting for Jay Jones and Democrats like him. CHARLES RUTBERG Rockbridge County
