August in Washington is a humid, miserable affair. There aren’t many tourists, and anyone who can escape from the city will use any excuse to do so. This year, though, President Donald Trump used this to his advantage, becoming the only player in town and turning the capital into a summer camp for his dictatorial ambitions while Congress and the courts were on holiday.

Over the last month, he’s been unshackled by any other political realities. He mistook an empty Washington for a captive audience and chose to create more chaos at home and abroad. The recess showed how far he’ll go when no one’s watching – and the test that awaits when Washington crowds back in.

President Donald Trump at the White House earlier this month.Credit: AP

Trump used the break to try and seize what he cast as an opening in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hosting both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky on US soil – not to resolve the conflict so much as to present himself as the big strong man in charge. Putin flew home with the footage he wanted, Zelensky avoided a repeat of his February disaster, alongside an armada of European allies and Trump whisperers, while Trump himself got nothing for his troubles.

In his second stint in the White House, part of Trump’s mission has been to bring the Federal Reserve to heel, demanding lower rates as a matter of instinct, not economics. Despite repeated warnings........

© The Sydney Morning Herald