Bunning Tells Audience Justice Ginsburg Dying

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to work Monday morning, 18 days after undergoing surgery for pancreatic cancer, but Sen. Jim Bunning predicted she would be dead within nine months.

The Kentucky Republican said during a speech in Elizabethtown on Saturday that he supports conservative judges “and that’s going to be in place very shortly because Rush Bader Ginsburg … has cancer.”

He told a crowd at a Republican Party dinner: “Bad cancer. The kind that you don’t get better from. Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after [being diagnosed] with pancreatic cancer.”

Doctors termed Ginsburg’s disease a “Stage 1” cancer, meaning they found it in the early stages, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.

Only about 20 percent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for more than a year. But those diagnosed with Stage 1 cancer have between a 21 percent and 37 percent chance of surviving for more than five years, according to the American Cancer Society.

Ginsburg, 75, was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and is one of the most liberal members of the court.