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.

Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, was arrested in Brookline, Massachusetts after allegedly firing a pellet gun outside Temple Beth Zion as Yom Kippur began — the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

According to Brookline police, the incident unfolded on the night of October 1 at 9:07 p.m. Security guards working at Temple Beth Zion for the holiday reported hearing two “loud shots” and saw Gouvea holding the pellet rifle. When they confronted him, Gouvea allegedly set the gun down, then lunged for it before fleeing into his nearby residence. Police arrived quickly, handcuffed him outside his home, and arrested him.

Gouvea, 43, was charged with illegally discharging a pellet gun, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, and malicious damage of personal property after a parked car window was found shattered with a pellet sitting inside. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Brookline District Court Thursday and was released on personal recognizance pending a November hearing.

Gouvea told police he had simply been “hunting rats” with the pellet rifle. Officers warned him about the “alarm he had caused,” but the incident drew more than a dozen police officers to the temple just as Yom Kippur services were underway — a time when Jewish communities across the globe heighten security in the face of rising antisemitism.

The episode quickly drew national outrage, amplified on social media by StopAntisemitism and others who emphasized that a Harvard Law visiting professor had fired shots near a synagogue at the start of Yom Kippur. Critics highlighted Gouvea’s past online behavior, noting that on October 7, 2023 — the day Hamas and Palestinian civilians slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis — he posted “Rainy day, party time!” on social media.

Hm. pic.twitter.com/oKeWXtdAbd

— Ben B@dejo (@BenTelAviv) October 5, 2025

Harvard Law School announced only late on Friday that Gouvea had been placed on administrative leave “as the school seeks to learn more about this matter.” But this raised further controversy. Observers accused the university and its student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, of soft-pedaling the story. Initially, The Crimson reported the arrest prominently and noted Harvard’s silence. But after outrage grew online, the headline and lead of the article were changed to emphasize Gouvea’s “administrative leave” — without clearly stating that the leave came only after the story had gone viral.

Critics charged that Harvard and The Crimson had coordinated a narrative to downplay the incident, burying the fact that an alleged gunman near a synagogue on Yom Kippur was still actively teaching at the law school until public pressure forced action.

Gouvea serves as an associate professor at the University of São Paulo and runs a Brazilian think tank on “social and environmental justice.”