Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg calls Trump a 'faker,' he says she should resign

"Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!" Trump tweeted.

It is highly unusual for a justice to make such politically charged remarks, and some critics said she crossed the line. House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday night the comments were "out of place."

"For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president and Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm."

Having met with Ginsburg on a regular basis for more than a decade and sometimes been struck by her frankness, I found her response classic. The 83-year-old justice expressed no regret on Monday for the comments or surprise that she would be criticized. Any disbelief she expressed stemmed from the fact that Trump has gotten so far in the election cycle.

"At first I thought it was funny," she said of Trump's early candidacy. "To think that there's a possibility that he could be president ... " Her voice trailed off gloomily.

"I think he has gotten so much free publicity," she added, drawing a contrast between what she believes is tougher media treatment of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and returning to an overriding complaint: "Every other presidential candidate has turned over tax returns."

Ginsburg was appointed to the high court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, and is now the senior member of the liberal wing and leading voice countering conservative Chief Justice Roberts. She has drawn a cult-like following among young people who have nicknamed her The Notorious R.B.G., a play on American rapper The Notorious B.I.G.

I have witnessed her off-bench bluntness many times through the years.  During 2009 oral arguments in a case involving a 13-year-old Arizona girl who had been strip-searched by school administrators looking for drugs, she was troubled that some male justices played down any harm to the student. "They have never been a 13-year-old girl," Ginsburg told me. "It's a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn't think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood."

Earlier in 2009, she was being treated for pancreatic cancer yet made sure to attend President Barack Obama's televised speech to a joint session of Congress, explaining that she wanted people to know the Supreme Court was not all men. "I also wanted them to see I was alive and well, contrary to that senator who said I'd be dead within nine months." She was referring to Sen. Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, who had said she would likely die within nine months from the pancreatic cancer. Bunning later apologized.

It was evident in our interview on Monday that when Ginsburg imagines who would succeed Obama, she does not expect Trump to prevail over Clinton.

Acknowledging her own age and that Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer will turn 80 and 78, respectively, Ginsburg said of the possible next president: "She is bound to have a few appointments (to the Supreme Court) in her term."