By VIVIAN SALAMA
Donald Trump called Wednesday for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign for saying publicly that she feels he is unfit to be president. Lashing out, Trump said the 83-year-old justice’s “mind is shot.”
“Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee wrote in an early morning tweet on @realDonaldTrump. “Her mind is shot — resign!”
Ginsburg said in an interview with The Associated Press last week that she didn’t want to think about the possibility that Trump would be president and predicted that Democrat Hillary Clinton will win and have a few appointments to make to the Supreme Court.
It is highly unusual for a sitting justice to weigh in so publicly on a political campaign, though Ginsburg is known for speaking her mind on other issues and is celebrated as a liberal icon known to fans as Notorious RBG.
In a subsequent interview with The New York Times, she joked about moving to New Zealand if Trump is elected. She escalated her criticism on Tuesday, telling CNN that Trump is a “faker” and questioning how he has “gotten away with not turning over his tax returns.”
“He has no consistency about him,” she said.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not immediately respond Wednesday to a reporter’s request for comment on Trump’s criticism.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that it was “totally inappropriate” for Ginsburg to criticize Trump. He said 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.
House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN Tuesday that Ginsburg’s comments “shows bias to me.”
Former Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, who on Tuesday endorsed Clinton, said Wednesday he agrees with Ginsburg’s remarks.
The Vermont senator declined to say whether it is appropriate for a sitting Supreme Court justice to openly criticize a White House contender. But he told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he agrees Trump is a “total opportunist” and said “the record clear is quite clear that he lies just a whole lot of the time.”
Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, and is the senior member of the court’s liberal wing of justices.
One of the high court’s most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia, died in February and the vacancy has yet to be filled.
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