President Trump was finishing up a rally in Minnesota on Friday and greeted reporters before heading onto Air Force One when he was made aware of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing.
“Wow, I didn’t know that,” he said, stunned. Pausing momentarily, Trump then said Ginsburg was an “amazing woman who led an amazing life” before adding that he was “sad to hear” that news.
Trump’s reaction has been welcomed as a moment of humanity in the midst of bitter debate and hyper partisanship as the presidential election nears.
The White House later released an official statement.
Tributes and stories have flooded in, many speaking to Ginsburg’s ability to resist the hyper partisanship bitterness of the modern era, despite political differences.
This thread from Christopher Scalia speaks volumes to Ginsburg’s ability to retain her humanity in one of the most divided times in our nation’s history.
Scalia shared a few notes from his famous father, Justice Antonin Scalia, that showed their relationship was sincere, including the time Scalia bought flowers for Ginsburg on her birthday, and Justice Sutton made a crack about how many votes had all those flowers helped him win. Scalia’s response? “Some things are more important than votes.”
Ginsburg, one of the best known of all the Supreme Court justices in recent years, was famous even before she became a justice. For years, she’d fought on the legal front for the cause of equal treatment for women, especially in the workplace. Long before she served on the Supreme Court, she argued half-a-dozen cases over gender discrimination before the Court, winning most of them.
Married with children, she was known as a particularly hard-working lawyer, becoming a prime example of a modern woman who “could have it all” – success and accomplishment on both the home front and in the workplace.
You can read more about her legacy on the court and beyond here: