Donald Trump Rips Ginsburg: "Her Mind Is Shot, She Should Resign" As NYT Says Trump Is Right
Following two days of inexplicable attacks by none other than a Supreme Court Justice, who said she would move to New Zealand if Trump were elected, as well as calling Trump "a faker", the Donald finally snapped and ripped Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a Twitter message late Tuesday. "Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me," Trump wrote on his Twitter account. “Her mind is shot — resign."
As Fox notes, Trump has been on the defensive after Ginsburg told the Associated Press last week that she felt he was unqualified for the position. She said in an interview that she didn't want to think about the possibility that Trump would be president and predicted that Democrat Hillary Clinton would win. Trump told the New York Times earlier Tuesday that her comments were “highly inappropriate” and a “disgrace to the court.”
“It’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly … I think she should apologize to the court. I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible,” he added.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that it was "totally inappropriate" for Ginsburg to criticize Trump. McConnell said that members of the Supreme Court shouldn't weigh in on American elections.
"It raises a level of skepticism that the American people have from time to time about just how objective the Supreme Court is, whether they're over there to call the balls and strikes, or weigh in on one side or another," he said.
None of the above was unexpected, but in a truly surprising twist none other than liberal media bastion, the NYT, issued an Op-Ed overnight titled "Donald Trump Is Right About Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg", in which it said "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling."
In this election cycle in particular, the potential of a new president to affect the balance of the court has taken on great importance, with the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. As Justice Ginsburg pointed out, other justices are nearing an age when retirement would not be surprising. That makes it vital that the court remain outside the presidential process. And just imagine if this were 2000 and the resolution of the election depended on a Supreme Court decision. Could anyone now argue with a straight face that Justice Ginsburg’s only guide would be the law?
Judging by the surprising move in swing states which now support Trump over Hillary, it appears that Ginsburg's intervention may have once again ended up helping Trump at a time when he sorely needed an outside intervention to prop up his presidential chances.
The full NYT Op-Ed is below:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling.
Three times in the past week, Justice Ginsburg has publicly discussed her view of the presidential race, in the sharpest terms. In an interview with The Times published Sunday, Justice Ginsburg said, “I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” joking that if her husband were alive, he might have said, “It’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”
Earlier, in an interview with The Associated Press that appeared on Friday, when asked to consider a Trump victory, Justice Ginsburg replied, “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.”
On Monday Justice Ginsburg doubled down, calling Mr. Trump “a faker,” who “has no consistency about him.” In that interview, with CNN, she added: “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”
Mr. Trump responded on Tuesday. “I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly,” he told The Times. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.”
There is no legal requirement that Supreme Court justices refrain from commenting on a presidential campaign. But Justice Ginsburg’s comments show why their tradition has been to keep silent.
In this election cycle in particular, the potential of a new president to affect the balance of the court has taken on great importance, with the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. As Justice Ginsburg pointed out, other justices are nearing an age when retirement would not be surprising. That makes it vital that the court remain outside the presidential process. And just imagine if this were 2000 and the resolution of the election depended on a Supreme Court decision. Could anyone now argue with a straight face that Justice Ginsburg’s only guide would be the law?
Mr. Trump’s hands, of course, are far from clean on the matter of judicial independence. It was just weeks ago that he was lambasting Gonzalo Curiel, the United States District Court judge overseeing a case against Trump University, saying that as a “Mexican,” the Indiana-born judge could not be impartial.
All of which makes it only more baffling that Justice Ginsburg would choose to descend toward his level and call her own commitment to impartiality into question. Washington is more than partisan enough without the spectacle of a Supreme Court justice flinging herself into the mosh pit.
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