WASHINGTON--Republican Donald Trump thrust the U.S. Supreme Court into the presidential campaign debate on Wednesday, rallying conservatives with a call for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign after she lambasted him in a series of media interviews.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee led a chorus of outrage over the comments by Ginsburg, who described Trump as a "faker" and speculated about the possibility of moving to New Zealand if he won the White House.
In a post-midnight counterattack on Twitter, Trump said the 83-year-old leader of the court's liberal wing had "embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!"
The furor gave Trump a cause to help galvanize conservatives divided over his unorthodox candidacy but concerned that the high court is too liberal, a mistrust fueled by recent rulings upholding racial preferences in university admissions and striking down tough abortion restrictions in Texas.
In three recent interviews, Ginsburg questioned how Trump had gotten away with not turning over his tax returns and said she could not bear to think about the wealthy real estate developer winning the White House. In response, Trump said Ginsburg had politicized the Supreme Court with her comments and suggested she owed her fellow justices an apology.
"I'm questioning her mental capacity," he told Fox News Channel on Wednesday. "For her to have done that is an absolute disgrace to the Supreme Court."
Other Republicans jumped to join the attack, saying Ginsburg had proven she could not be an impartial voice on the country's highest court. "For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president or Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm," Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on CNN on Tuesday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called her comments "totally inappropriate," while Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Ginsburg's statements reflected poorly on her objectivity.
The New York Times and Washington Post joined in the rebukes, with the Times asking her to uphold the court's tradition of silence in political campaigns and drop the "punditry and name-calling."
