>> surely there's some kind of "reasonable person" standard at some point, right? Are you referring to whether a reasonable listener would believe the defamato

>> surely there's some kind of "reasonable person" standard at some point, right? Are you referring to whether a reasonable listener would believe the defamatory claims? Or whether the person doing the defaming could reasonably be expected to know better than to believe what they're saying? Normally, we think of situations where the defamer is a crazy person and no reasonable listener would believe them. But the distinction seems pertinent to the potential prosecution against Trump based on the Jan 6th committee hearings, because in that case the normal "reasonable person" standard would be inverted. A reasonable listener could easily believe that the President of the United States was describing reality when he claimed he knew the election was stolen and that the Vice President could legally overturn the results. His defense may well rest on whether he himself could have reasonably believed that what he was saying was true.