Donald Trump suggests 83-year-old Supreme Court justice has gone senile after she mocked him
Donald Trump has launched a scathing attack on pro-LGBT Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – suggesting she is losing her mind due to old age after she spoke out against him.
Ginsburg is one of the most pro-gay justices on the US Supreme Court and a consistent voice in favour of equality, performing numerous same-sex weddings herself.
The 83-year-old liberal stalwart spoke out about Trump earlier this week in a rare interview with the New York Times.
She said: “I can’t imagine what this place would be, I can’t imagine what the country would be, with Donald Trump as our president.
“For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be… I don’t even want to contemplate that.”
The next President will be responsible for filling at least one vacancy on the court due to the death of Antonin Scalia, while 79-year-old Anthony Kennedy and Ginsburg both may opt to retire, leading to a fundamental realignment on the court.
Trump has previously released a shortlist of ultra-conservative candidates he would consider for the court – the majority of whom are strongly anti-LGBT and opposed the equal marriage ruling.
Speculating on what her late husband Martin D Ginsburg would have said, the justice joked: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand”.
In response, Trump appeared to suggest that Justice Ginsburg had lost her mind because she’s old.
He tweeted: “Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot – resign!”
Trump also branded the justice a “disgrace” and called on her to apologise and retire.
Undeterred, Ginsburg repeated her criticisms in a CNN interview.
She said: “He is a faker. He has no consistency about him.
“He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.
“How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”
The gay icon might not relish the possibility of working with one of Trump’s preferred candidates, Texas justice William H Pryor Jr, for the vacant spot on the US Supreme Court.
Pryor has previously attracted attention for being one of the most virulently anti-LGBT justices in America – having argued in a 2003 brief that Texas should be allowed to keep its sodomy law.
He argued in 2003: “[There is] no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy just because it is done behind closed doors.
“Homosexual sodomy has not historically been recognized in this country as a right — to the contrary, it has historically been recognized as a wrong — it is not a fundamental right.”
He added: “Texas is hardly alone in concluding that homosexual sodomy may have severe physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual consequences, which do not necessarily attend heterosexual sodomy, and from which Texas’s citizens need to be protected.”
