Factually speaking,особенное порнография Ruth Bader Ginsburg was correct in her three recent interviews published Tuesday -- with the New York Times, the Associated Press and CNN -- where the Supreme Court justice took Donald Trump to task.
As she said in the latest interview Monday, Trump isa faker. Most reasonable people who have paid attention to his history can attest to it. She said he doesn't have any consistency, and again, she's bang on the money. It's part of his appeal; people can project any policy they want onto his blank, orange businessman's globe.
SEE ALSO: Notorious RBG basically tells Texas abortion law to GTFOShe's not wrong. She's not alone in thinking it. She just happens to be one of the eight people currently sitting on America's highest court who can't say this sort of stuff in public, prior to the election, without significant unintended consequences.
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One of those unintended consequences: She may, should a close election end up in the courts, hand the presidency to Mr. Big Faker himself.
Now to be sure, Notorious RBG is not the first Supreme Court justice to abandon neutrality regarding a presidential candidate within earshot of a reporter. An infamous precedent was set by Sandra Day O'Connor, whose swing vote in the Bush V. Gore decision gave the nation eight years of Dubya.
O'Connor was to be found cheering for Bush on election night in 2000, and publicly stating her opinion that Gore's Florida win was "terrible." The fact that she did not recuse herself from the subsequent court decision that shut down the recount remains one of the Supreme Court's greatest travesties. (She regretted years later that the court took up the case at all.)
But here's the difference, dear beloved RBG: O'Connor didn't insert herself into the election campaign itself. She didn't loudly proclaim her hatred of Gore in three prominent interviews. If she had, she'd have handed Gore the best and biggest issue of his lackluster campaign.
In fact, a sitting justice criticizing a candidate would probably have sparked a separation-of-power outrage. Perhaps enough of one to overcome that 537-vote deficit in Florida -- and tip the whole election in the direction she didn't intend.
SEE ALSO: How the Internet developed a crush on Notorious RBG and Loretta LynchI don't believe RBG's outburst is enough to tilt the election to Trump, because I don't believe Trump is as close to winning as Gore was. But I do believe she has just handed the faker his first beneficial controversy of the election cycle. (Trump, of course, didn't fail to make hay of her comments on Twitter.)
Trump's supporters have victim narratives locked into their psyches. They tend to feel victimized by Muslims, by Mexicans, by minorities in general, by the media as a whole and in particular by President Barack Obama.
Now, thanks to RBG, they can feel victimized by a whole new branch of government. Meanwhile, independent voters who resent this sort of interference may be tipped into the Trump camp.
If a Clinton-Trump election recount were to head to the courts as Bush-Gore did, RBG would now face loud, clear and entirely accurate calls to recuse herself.
If that recusal were to happen, she would hand the election to the four remaining conservative justices. And if she didn't recuse herself, the court would look even more tarnished than it did in 2000.
Ginsburg's comments stand in stark contrast to O'Connor's in another sense: They were made in a series of interviews, rather than merely within earshot of a journalist. RBG was in that most carefully guarded moment of a justice's life, the rare media interview. She should have known better.
That's especially true given that the Trump comments do not appear to have been the main thrust of the interviews. Buried in all this palaver is the fact that RBG took the Senate to task for not performing its constitutional duty and considering the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the court.
“There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year,” Ginsburg said.
It was the first time any of the justices have spoken out about what, in any normal year, would be one of the most pressing threats to the rule of law. She clearly feels strongly about it and she clearly isn't alone. Her message should have rung loud and clear through the halls of our do-nothing Congress.
To recap: Ginsburg handed her political enemy a cudgel with which to beat her court, an issue to win voters he shouldn't be winning andpushed the Merrick issue further out of the headlines. Then as a kicker, she counted herself out of any possible recount battle, all in the space of a few ill-considered answers to deceptively friendly questions.
So if RBG doesn't return to a neutral position ASAP, her good political sense has clearly gone MIA.
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