Donald Trump Should Read Up On Libel Laws

"I've had stories written about me -- by your newspaper and by others -- that are so false, that are written with such hatred -- I'm not a bad person," Trump said. "I'm running -- I want to do something that's good. It's not an easy thing to do."

Indeed, and how much easier if he could chill the speech of folks like us with the threat of libel suits. Our publisher, Fred Ryan, asked Trump what opening up, exactly, he had in mind.

For someone who envisions some serious tinkering with the First Amendment, Trump didn't seem to have given it much thought. He cited "the Hulk Hogan thing," although that was an invasion of privacy case, not a libel suit. "I'd have to get my lawyers in to tell you, but I would loosen 'em up," he said of the New York Times v. Sullivan rules. "I think I would get a little bit away from malice without having to get too totally away."

In Trump's ideal world, a writer who unfairly maligns him should have an obligation to correct the record. "And if they don't do a retraction, they should ... have a form of a trial. I don't want to impede free press by the way. The last thing I would want to do is that."

Except that Trump, having been on the other side, knows something about what defending a libel case can cost. What was striking in his discussion of the issue was how much of it seemed directed not at news reporters who get facts wrong (Trump famously sued an author who questioned his status as a billionaire) but at opinion writers like me, whose freedom to be biting, as Brennan so well understood, is at the core of the First Amendment.

"Whether or not a newspaper can survive a succession of such judgments, the pall of fear and timidity imposed upon those who would give voice to public criticism is an atmosphere in which the First Amendment freedoms cannot survive," Brennan wrote.

Read Times v. Sullivan, Mr. Trump.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.