United States | News & Politics

Not lawyer. But pretty sure the hate speech exception , if there is one, is only if it incites a crime.

Also not a lawyer, but inciting a crime isn't enough. It has to be a direct incitement of a specific crime. It's free speech to say that people should take up arms against this administration. (Don't be surprised if you end up on some lists though.) Providing a time and place where someone will be and suggesting a plan of action to conduct an assassination almost certainly would be out of bounds.

The bar for a person like the president who is a public figure, winning a libel or slander case is typically pretty high,

Unfortunately, winning the suit isn't really the goal. Several suits that would not have been won by Trump have been settled for crazy sums, just because institutions are afraid of Trump's willingness to abuse federal power to go after his personal enemies. They don't want to escalate further because all that really matters to them is the bottom line.