Donald Trump tore into the high court justice Tuesday, telling the Times that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s comments were “highly appropriate” | Getty NYT, WaPo side with Trump over Ginsburg

In the case of Trump v. Ginsburg, The New York Times and Washington Post’s editorial boards are siding with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been surprisingly outspoken about the presidential election in recent days, starting Friday, when she told The Associated Press “everything would be up for grabs” if Donald Trump were to win the White House.


In an interview published Sunday, she told The New York Times that she couldn’t picture America under a Trump presidency.

“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” she said. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”

And she blasted the billionaire Monday in an interview with CNN, telling the network that Trump is a “faker.”

Trump tore into the high court justice Tuesday, telling the Times that Ginsburg’s comments were “highly inappropriate” and suggesting she “get off the court as soon as possible.”

The real estate mogul added Wednesday that Ginsburg’s “mind is shot” and explicitly called on her to resign. “Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me,” he tweeted. “Her mind is shot - resign!”

Put simply, the Times ruled that Trump is right. “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling,” its editorial board wrote Wednesday.

Following Trump’s criticism of a federal judge over his Mexican heritage, the Times found it “baffling that Justice Ginsburg would choose to descend toward his level and call her own commitment to impartiality into question,” the newspaper wrote. “Washington is more than partisan enough without the spectacle of a Supreme Court justice flinging herself into the mosh pit.”

The Washington Post concurred with the Times’ opinion and even Ginsburg’s statements to the media, which the newspaper said it didn’t find surprising.

“However valid her comments may have been, though, and however in keeping with her known political bent, they were still much, much better left unsaid by a member of the Supreme Court,” its editorial board wrote.

The Post cited the Code of Conduct for U.S. judges, which states that judges shouldn’t publicly endorse or oppose any candidate for public office, and argued that any politicization — real or not — undermines the public's faith in an impartial court.

“As journalists, we generally favor more openness and disclosure from public figures rather than less,” the Post wrote. “Yet Justice Ginsburg’s off-the-cuff remarks about the campaign fall into that limited category of candor that we can’t admire, because it’s inconsistent with her function in our democratic system.”

Hillary Clinton’s campaign withheld judgment — on Ginsburg, that is. Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon told CNN he would let Ginsburg speak for herself but criticized Trump’s “completely inappropriate” response.

“I would just observe that there’s probably a lot of people that agree with what she said,” Fallon said. “Donald Trump has called for her to step down. I think that’s completely inappropriate, but it’s no surprise given the types of people that he would like to appoint to the Supreme Court.”