The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for August 11th, 2016, The Many People Are Saying Edition.

I'm Emily Bazelon. I'm here, well, not physically here, but spiritually here, with two

wonderful people. John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation, the author of Whistle Stop. Hey, John.

Hi, we'll see how wonderful I am. Are you going to let that long a pause elapse every time I ask you anything today?

That could make the show really long.

Oh, was there a long pause?

Oh, I thought I am, I thought I responded right away.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm all the way in San Francisco.

There's a delay for the Pony Express to get the message out here.

All right.

Well, let's see how that goes.

And we have a special guest

joining us today, Kirsten Powers, who is a commentator at Fox and a columnist for USA Today,

and is all by herself in our DC studio. Sorry. I'm holding down the fort here. We have three topics

for you today, as usual. We are going to talk about Donald Trump. What a surprise.

Our first topic will be about the Republican defections he is facing and why some of the

steps he's trying to take to supposedly pull the party together, like the economic policy he

discussed this week, doesn't seem to be mattering to the people who are leaving him.

Our second topic is about how to apologize in today's political climate. If you are Donald

Trump or Hillary Clinton or anyone else and you've said something that maybe is a little

regrettable or completely wrong and stupid, how do you walk it back? And then our third topic is a new piece in the

...