The Supreme Court was front and center at the third and last presidential debate on Wednesday, and Donald Trump outlined his vision for its future by ... complaining about how a female justice treated him over the summer.
After his rival Hillary Clinton said she’d like for the high court to uphold women’s rights and put checks on money in politics, among other policy areas, the Republican nominee resurfaced his brief war of words in July with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“Something happened recently where Justice Ginsburg made some very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people, many, many millions of people that I represent,” Trump protested. “And she was forced to apologize, and apologize she did. But these were statements that should never ever have been made.”
Some of Trump’s grievances are true — except for the bit about the justice lashing out at people other than him or apologizing, neither of which actually happened.
Yes, Ginsburg gave a series of interviews in which she called him “a faker” and said she’d rather not ponder a future Trump presidency. And the former reality start responded with one of his characteristic Twitter meltdowns:
But Ginsburg never quite apologized, issuing instead a demure statement calling her prior remarks “ill-advised.”
“In the future I will be more circumspect,” Ginsburg said at the time. A number of judicial ethicists thought her comments crossed ethical lines.
None of this matters. It has nothing to do with the first segment of Wednesday’s debate, in which Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked both candidates about where they’d like to see the Supreme Court take the country and their personal views on how the Constitution should be interpreted.
One reason Trump may have deflected to his prior kerfuffle with Ginsburg: He has shown he knows next to nothing about constitutional issues and the rule of law.
Just this week, some of the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s biggest adherents ― a group of respected scholars and lawyers ― declared Trump isn’t fit to be in the White House.
“Our Constitution vests in a single person the executive power of the United States. In light of his character, judgment, and temperament, we would not vest that power in Donald Trump,” these legal thinkers wrote in an open letter.
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.