Night of the Living Op-Ed! (A Belated Spooktacular)
Opening Arguments
Opening Arguments Media LLC
4.3 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
VR12 - Yes, we absolutely thought this was coming out pre-Halloween. Halloween may be over, but NEVERTHELESS THE SPOOKTACULAR PERSISTED!
In this Vapid Response double feature, Thomas, Matt, and Lydia are haunted by two ghoulish takes from the past:
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FEATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON: Politico’s insanely longform access journalism piece from August 2024 on how Project 2025 was so totally over, just never happening, nothing to see here
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EROSSERHEAD: New York Times resident traditional conservative Ross Douthat’s 2015 analysis of why Donald Trump is definitely not a fascist
We then screen a short horror film recently shot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to opening up. Hello and welcome to opening arguments, the show that |
| 0:13.3 | helps you make sense of law in the news or did back when the law made sense at all. I'm Thomas. |
| 0:19.7 | That over there is real life immigration attorney Matt Cameron. How are you doing, Matt? I'm haunted by the ghost of the law, Thomas, but I'm doing it. Getting through. Yeah. Happy Halloween. And yeah, a spooktacular sort of, of sorts, right? This will come out, what, just before Halloween, a few days? It should. Yeah. And that's where we should also tell you that the patrons will |
| 0:38.8 | also be ghosts because we're recording this ahead of time Lydia and I will be at QED |
| 0:42.2 | in Manchester and so no patron shoutouts this time we have really enjoyed getting back to |
| 0:46.8 | those but we're recording way in advance so we won't have the new patron names sorry |
| 0:51.3 | about that but next time also of course Lydia Smith course, Lydia Smith. I'm here too. |
| 0:55.5 | Yay. I'm doing well. I'm actually getting ready to celebrate my birthday. And yeah, by the time we get |
| 1:02.6 | back from the trip, it'll be post my birthday. So I'm taking this moment to celebrate myself. |
| 1:07.9 | Yeah. Happy birthday, call on? Yeah. Happy birthday, me. Yeah.. Happy birthday me. Thanks for sharing with us. |
| 1:13.8 | That's why the patron shoutouts aren't happening is because this episode's all about me and |
| 1:18.8 | shouting out my birthday. So speaking of Spooktacular, we are haunted by the ghosts of the worst takes |
| 1:24.8 | ever. This is great. This is fantastic. So bad. One of these is something I saw on a bleat, on a skidit, on a, on a, on a, what, do we settle on that, Blue Sky? Post. An amazing. I don't like any of the other names. An amazing. I like skeet. I think it's fine. An amazing story that did not age well, just to give a preview |
| 1:44.8 | before the break. I'll give a preview. Political. Political. Politico story. Here's the headline. |
| 1:51.7 | It was supposed to be Trump's administration in waiting. But Project 2025 was a mirage all along. |
| 1:59.0 | Hold on. It gets better. The inside story of how Project 2025 fell apart. |
| 2:05.6 | That's from August 2nd of 2024, folks. |
| 2:10.4 | So that is the spookiness. |
| 2:13.1 | That is the Victorian child ghost equivalent of a take. |
| 2:17.1 | That is really, I can't wait to dig into how wrong this stupid piece of shit was. |
| 2:22.1 | Russ Vaux is cackling right now. |
| 2:24.8 | Unbelievable. |
... |
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