"B-but trump said he had no right (in the common sense not legal sense) to get up in front of millions of people and claim he never read the constitution. If he had read the constitution he would've known he does have that right"
A false statement made with malice against a public figure is not protected. We all know it's a false statement because Trump has repeatedly cited other parts of the constitution when arguing that if obama or cruz weren't born in the US to naturalized US citizen parents they can't run for president.
It is a knowingly false statement that is easy to prove, so Sullivan v New York Times (1964) doesn't apply.
This is one of those times where you can show actual malice, usually those cases are hard to prove but a person getting up and lying about a figure for public office in front of the DNC seems malicious to me. All trump would have to do is cite previous times when he cited parts of the constitution. Since he has dealt with a metric fuck ton of legal cases and even testified before congress there would be video evidence that it's a false statement. The question is is it reasonable for this person to think that trump hadn't read it. If he wrote the speech himself then it's probably protected, I'd bet money the DNC wrote it for him and it's reasonable to think the DNC would know trump knows the constitution
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Before 1964, defamation law was determined on a state-by-state basis, with courts applying the local Common Law. Questions of Freedom of Speech were generally found to be irrelevant to libel or slander cases, and defendants were held to be strictly liable even if they had no idea that the communication was false or defamatory, or if they had exercised reasonable caution in ascertaining its truthfulness. This deference to state protection of personal reputation was confirmed in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S. Ct. 766, 86 L. Ed. 1031 (1942), in which the U.S. Supreme Court stated, "There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise constitutional problems." The Court in Chaplinsky held that defamatory speech is not essential to the exposition of ideas and that it can be regulated without raising constitutional concerns. This reasoning was confirmed in Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250, 72 S. Ct. 725, 96 L. Ed. 919 (1952), where the Court again held that libelous speech is not protected by the Constitution.
In 1964, the Court changed the direction of libel law dramatically with its decision in new york times v. sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S. Ct. 710, 11 L. Ed. 2d 686 (1964). For the first time, the Court placed some libelous speech under the protection of the First Amendment. The plaintiff, a police official, had claimed that false allegations about him were published in the New York Times, and he sued the newspaper for libel. The Court balanced the plaintiff's interest in preserving his reputation against the public's interest in freedom of expression in the area of political debate. The Court wrote that "libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment." Therefore, in order to protect the free flow of ideas in the political arena, the law requires that a public official who alleges libel must prove actual malice in order to recover damages. The First Amendment protects open and robust debate on public issues even when such debate includes "vehement, caustic, unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."
Since Sullivan, a public official or other person who has voluntarily assumed a position in the public eye must prove that a libelous statement "was made with 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard to whether it was false or not" (Sullivan). The actual-malice standard does not require any ill will on the part of the defendant. Rather, it merely requires the defendant to be aware that the statement is false or very likely false. Reckless disregard is present if the plaintiff can show that the defendant had "serious doubts as to the truth of [the] publication" (see St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 88 S. Ct. 1323, 20 L. Ed. 2d 262 [1968]).
Also since Sullivan, the question of who is a public official has been raised often. In Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 86 S. Ct. 669, 15 L. Ed. 2d 597 (1966), the Court found that a nonelected official "among the hierarchy of government employees who have, or appear to have, substantial responsibility for, or control over, the conduct of public affairs" was a public official within the meaning of Sullivan. Similarly, in Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U.S. 265, 91 S. Ct. 621, 28 L. Ed. 2d 35 (1971), the Court found that a candidate for public office fell within the category of public officials who must prove actual malice in order to recover
Trump didn't mean it in a legal sense, he meant it in a common sense the way "you have no right to say that about me" is commonly used.
