In the event there were any lingering doubts, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made it clear on Thursday she’s ready to move on from her week-long war of words with Donald Trump.
Asked to articulate why she felt the need to issue a statement earlier in the day when she acknowledged it was “ill-advised” to talk about the Trump candidacy, she said plainly, “Because it was incautious.”
“I said something I should not have said,” she told NPR’s Nina Totenberg, and then proceeded to re-read her statement for the record, just in case any listeners missed it.
“On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them,” she said in her Thursday statement, which stopped short of apologizing to Trump.
“Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office,” she added. “In the future, I will be more circumspect.”
Trump hasn’t addressed the controversy since, even though he had earlier said her comments were a “disgrace” to the Supreme Court, that he was owed an apology, and that he would “swamp” her with “real judges” if elected president.
Plus this bit of characteristic outrage:
Totenberg, who is friends with the justice, did try to dig a little deeper, even commending Ginsburg for her historic transparency ― such as when she voluntarily made public her prior battle with cancer and her acknowledgment of a minor error in a legal opinion.
But she couldn’t get another word out of the justice.
“I did something I should not have done. It’s over and done with, and I don’t want to discuss it any more,” Ginsburg said.
History will decide the ultimate victor in this unprecedented media battle between a sitting Supreme Court justice and a candidate for public office, or what reputational damage, if any, the Supreme Court suffered as a result.
But Ginsburg at least chose to bow out gracefully, which is more than can be said of Trump and just about any of the numerous disparaging things he has said in his campaign for the White House.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.