Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Thursday, August 17th, 2017, The Very Fine People Edition.

I'm here with two very fine people. I should mention that David Plotz is still off gallivanting.

I think he is in Oregon for the eclipse.

And I also think he'll be back next week.

But who cares?

Because we have John Dickerson, host to Face the Nation,

who is not in a studio, and that's why he sounds a little strange.

Hey, John.

Hello, Emily.

That was me sounding strange.

You sound enough strange without that, thanks, though.

And our special honored guest is Jeff Goldberg, who is the editor of the Atlantic.

I hope that is the right title.

He runs the place.

Editor in chief, but I don't care because I'm very egalitarian. I see. Okay. As long as everyone knows that you're in charge. Thanks so much

for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. On this week's Gab Fest, there's just nothing to talk

about. We had to really scrounge for topics this week. Just kidding. First, we will discuss the political aftermath of the

violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last weekend. In this first topic,

we're going to focus on the consequences for President Trump, because what choice does he leave us?

In our second topic, we're going to talk about some of the legal questions the

rally raised about free speech and demonstrations, and also the implications going forward for

the white nationalist movement and its opponents. And our third topic will be the Alabama Senate

...