Coffee and Tea with Lev and Dean: Trump’s 250th Birthday Humiliation, Two SCOTUS Beatdowns in One Morning, and the Quiet Coup Underneath It All

June 29, 2026

Today’s Coffee and Tea with Lev Parnas hit a little different today. We’re recording our usual sit-down and the Supreme Court is dropping bombs on Trump in real time, the National Mall looks like a yard sale nobody RSVP’d to, and Lev — who has actually been inside the room where these guys lie to each other — is connecting the dots in a way that should make every single one of you pay attention.

If you don’t know Lev: Soviet-born, Florida-based businessman who spent years as Rudy Giuliani’s fixer in Ukraine. He’s the guy at the center of Trump’s first impeachment, the guy who got hit with federal campaign-finance charges for funnelling foreign money into Trump-aligned PACs, did his time, and came out the other side as one of the most credible anti-Trump voices in America precisely because he watched the sausage get made. He still has lines into Trumpworld. He still hears things. And when he tells me what’s coming, I listen.

Here’s what we got into.

The Freedom 250 Self-Own for the Ages

Lev and I could not stop laughing. After Trump HIJACKED the bipartisan, non-political America 250 commission — fired the guy running it, spun up his own shadow nonprofit called Freedom 250, and basically rerouted the entire 250th birthday of the United States into a personal vanity project on the People’s Lawn — the universe is now collecting its receipts in the funniest way possible.

The “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall? EMPTY. The musical acts they booked all pulled out the second they figured out it was a partisan event. Several states, including six with Democratic governors, refused to send delegations — so there are literal empty booths with sad little chairs in them. NBC put opening-night attendance at “more than a thousand.” Trump himself got on stage and BEGGED people to show up to the next one because “if we have two empty seats, you know what’s going to happen? The fake news is going to say he didn’t fill out the arena.” He said that out loud. Into a microphone. On purpose.

Fox News is so worried about the optics they’re running shows live from the half-empty event trying to make it look populated. It’s not working. The whole country is laughing. This is one hundred million dollars of grift and self-enrichment, dressed up as patriotism, and America took one look and stayed home. The greatest self-own in presidential history.

SCOTUS Beatdown #1: Mail-In Voting Lives

While we were live, the Supreme Court — Trump’s own Supreme Court — handed him a 5-4 loss on mail-in ballots. Amy Coney Barrett (HIS appointee) wrote the opinion, joined by Roberts and the three liberal justices, telling the RNC to pound sand. States that count ballots postmarked by Election Day but received after? Totally legal. Roughly 30 states do it. Trump called it a “tremendous loss” on Truth Social, which it absolutely is, for him.

This is the entire strategy. Kneecap mail-in voting, scream “fraud” without evidence, and rig the playing field before the 2026 midterms. SCOTUS just said no.

SCOTUS Beatdown #2: “Rapist” Is Now Legally Permanent

And then — SAME MORNING — the Supreme Court refused to even hear Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll verdict. The $5 million civil judgment stands. The jury’s finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-90s and then defamed her? Final. Done. Bolted to his name forever. Judge Kaplan already noted in writing that what the jury found meets the common definition of rape, even if New York’s narrow legal definition technically called it “sexual abuse.” Lev unloaded here. So did I. The sitting President of the United States is, legally and permanently, an adjudicated sexual predator who owes his victim over $100 million when you add in the second case still on appeal. Let that radicalize you.

The Part That Actually Matters

Here’s where Lev got serious, and you need to listen.

All of this — the Freedom 250 clown show, the SCOTUS losses, Trump screaming into the void about his name on buildings — is a WELCOME DISTRACTION for the Project 2025 crew. While the boss is melting down in public, they are quietly, methodically corrupting US institutions ahead of the midterms.

Exhibit A: Bill Pulte. Trump just made the head of the housing finance agency the ACTING Director of National Intelligence. A 38-year-old guy with zero intelligence experience, who’d been using his housing perch to file criminal referrals against Trump’s enemies (Letitia James, Lisa Cook, Adam Schiff). Day one at ODNI, he started firing intel officials en masse. No Senate confirmation needed — 210 days of “acting” authority. Even John Thune said out loud, “We don’t need a weaponized DNI.”

That’s the play. Whisper to Trump that he’s the greatest, feed him bullshit about Trump arches and state fairs and slapping his name on everything so he stays distracted and angry, while the apparatchiks underneath him build an FSB-style political-intelligence machine that holds the country hostage no matter who votes for who in November.

Project 2025 isn’t a plan. It’s already happening. The state fair is the magician’s left hand. Watch the right one.

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— Dean

Coffee and Tea with Lev and Dean drops live on Substack. Catch the full conversation in the video above.

Thank you Ellie Leonard, Cat: Poli-Psych, Lyudmila and Daniel, Caro Henry, Cathy R. Payne, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lev Parnas! Join me for my next live video in the app.