What do you get when you cross a sassy old woman with an idiot?
Apparently national news.
In this week’s edition of “What Stupid Thing Will Trump do Next?”, The Donald has managed to insult one of the most respected leaders in America. We trust the Supreme Court Justices to keep the country in line with the Constitution, but can they keep Trump in line?
On a CNN video interview last Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Donald Trump a “faker” with “an ego” who “says whatever comes into his head at the moment.” Like that annoying kid from third grade, Trump needed a cool comeback. And just like his solution for taking care of Muslims and illegal immigrants, good old Ginsburg got the “let’s just get rid of her” line.
The most obvious problem is that Supreme Court Justices serve for life. Unless they resign, the Justices have the job until they die. So much for enjoying retirement, right?
Trump said that “The Notorious RBG”-- as she’s called around Washington-- needs to resign because her “mind is shot.”
Let me get this straight: Trump wants someone to resign for being old, from a group who is notoriously old? That makes sense.
In addition, the Supreme Court gets the final say in most federal actions. They can check any law or treaty to ensure that it’s allowed under the constitution. Trump seems to think he’s above all the checks and balances that the U.S. was built on, so we need more justices who can stand up to him.
Now I’ll give Donald the benefit of the doubt: it’s clear from previous remarks that he has never read the Constitution in his life, so he probably didn’t know how the Supreme Court works. Nevertheless, it is frightening that a presidential nominee doesn’t know how to limit his own power, and now he’s trying to undermine the group that would limit it for him.
Speaking of presidential power, the Supreme Court may see a lot of it in the next four years. Three of the justices -including Ginsburg at 83 - are in their eighties, so it is likely that the next president will have a huge opportunity to influence the courts for decades. Who knows what Trump could do to our Judiciary system? Republicans are already trying to take over SCOTUS by refusing to approve President Obama’s nomination to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. So you’re telling me that if Ginsburg also resigned, we’d have only seven justices until Obama leaves office?
The other big conversation that came out of this event was the partisanship of the justices. Legally, they are expected to show no party or ideological bias when voting on cases. Republicans are arguing that RBG’s remarks prove that she cannot fairly judge. But is partisan voting really something new? On many major cases-- including the recent Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.-- involving party differences, the ruling has followed party lines. When Obamacare’s individual mandate was being tested in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, republicans wrongly assumed they would get an easy win, just because there were five conservative justices on the bench.
So yes, justices often have a hard time keeping their own political opinions out of their votes, but that is a bigger problem that needs to be dealt with on its own. I think some news reporters and politicians are overreacting if they think RBG’s comments were blasphemous.
However, I don’t think her comments showed partisan bias, mainly because I view the Trump situation as a matter of moral opinion rather than a political one. Is RBG bashing Trump because she doesn’t want a Republican president? No, she’s bashing Trump because he’s a freaking idiot.
A couple days after the incident, RBG apologized, saying "On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them. Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect.”
She reminds me of myself: stubborn, outspoken and unwilling to put up with anyone's crap. Therefore I can predict that she probably did not regret those comments at all, rather she was compelled by the media or other government officials to apologize. I fully understand the need to filter your personal opinions for your job, but this election has reached unimaginable peaks. We have to think outside of the ethics box to take Trump down. The media is clearly not pushing Trump for answers, so we must rely on respected government officials to sway us in the right direction. If RBG's comments are what it takes to put the country back on track, so be it.
“The Notorious RBG” is a cancer survivor, a women’s rights activist and an extremely intelligent woman. Trump probably didn’t realize that a woman could be so successful without a rich husband or father. Yet seeing that he may be under SCOTUS fire a lot in the near future, it would be in his best interest to lay off now. This isn’t "The Apprentice." you can’t go up to a U.S. Supreme Court Justice and say “You’re Fired.”
You keep doing you, RBG.
