At first glance, Ginsburg seems like an odd figure to provide hope to Democrats, who have been forced to watch over the past few years as everything they hold sacred has been dragged through the mud by Trump. After all, Ginsburg isn’t a politician — and has no interested in being one. So how did we end up here?

It began during the 2016 election campaign, when Ginsburg broke the politics-what-politics? stance usually favored by Supreme Court justices, speaking out bluntly about her concerns regarding Trump.

“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” Ginsburg told The New York Times in a July 2016 interview in her Supreme Court chambers. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.” Ginsburg doubled down on those comments in a subsequent interview with CNN, calling Trump a “faker,” and adding: “”He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”