OPINION:
Hillary Clinton has spent most of her days, post-election, pining about her loss and blaming it on the deplorables who followed President Donald Trump — the so-called sexist, misogynist atmosphere she perceives as marking her race to the White House.
Well now, here comes Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tossing the same gender card. And not for the first time, either.
When asked by CNN’s Poppy Harlow during a Columbia University forum to clarify her previously made comments about sexism during the election year — that it was a “major factor” in determining the outcome — Ginsburg didn’t walk back, but rather ran head-first forward.
“I think it was difficult for Hillary Clinton to get by the macho atmosphere prevailing during that campaign,” Ginsburg said, The Hill reported. “[S]he was criticized in a way I think no men would have been criticized. I think anyone who watched that campaign unfold would answer the same way I did, yes, that sexism played a prominent role.
Disagree.
Clinton was criticized for her past political actions — just like any man would be. She was held to account for things like Benghazi and her past statements on immigration and border control, her future vision of U.S.-U.N. relations, her plans for tax reform and the economy — just like any man would be.
In other words, Clinton was held to account on pretty much gender neutral political platforms. She was questioned about most of the same issues as Trump — except Trump, of course, was slapped hard for his past treatment of and remarks about women. If anyone was subjected to gender-based questioning, it was Trump, not Clinton.
Ginsburg, however, has described herself as a “flaming feminist litigator,” CNN reported. And she’s a flamer, apparently, who made widespread news for her inappropriate — for a supposedly unbiased court justice — who spent the pre-election weeks condemning the idea of a Trump presidency, wondering “what the country would be” with him in the White House, and threatening, maybe somewhat jokingly, maybe somewhat not, to move to New Zealand.
In July 2016, Ginsburg said her husband, who died in 2010, would say about a Trump presidency “now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”
She also said during the same interview with The New York Times: “I can’t imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”
Fast-forward to February 2017, when Trump first took office, and Ginsburg remarked, in a thinly veiled commentary about the president: “We are not experiencing the best of times,” The Washington Post reported.
And in January, Ginsburg skipped out on Trump’s State of the Union — a somewhat non-surprising move, given the two once traded open barbs in the media and on Twitter. Ginsburg in 2016 called Trump a faker; Trump responded by tweeting Ginsburg’s “mind is shot” and she ought to “resign!”
The point?
Ginsburg, from the get-go, has been no fan of Trump’s.
Her views of the election, her views of Trump, ought to be taken with a grain of salt.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.