With tariffs and Putin summit, Trump is now fully unleashed

Donald Trump is finally getting almost everything that he wants. But the question is, how will everyone else respond to that? On Wednesday, he arrived at the Kennedy Center and announced that he would host the annual honours award ceremony, a first for a president. For a president who loves the theatrical, it's definitely a coup, especially given that he removed the board members that Joe Biden nominated before the new board made him chairman. Trump has long had a flair for the theatrical-at his rallies, he regularly plays "Memory" from Cats and "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Miserables-and it further reflects how he wants to remake parts of government that were previously nonpartisan and unchanged by who occupies the White House into his own image.

But while Trump taking over the performing arts center is campy and even a bit weird, it shows how Trump feels no scruples and that he can finally realise the vision he wants for the country. The only question at this point is what the rest of the world's pain tolerance will be.

Earlier this week, Trump made the unprecedented announcement that he would seize control of the Washington, DC police department and deploy the National Guard onto the streets of the nation's capital. Trump has long griped about crime and in many ways, it's a chance for him to live out the vision he wanted during the 2020 George Floyd protests, where he could deploy active duty troops onto the streets of American cities. He tried similar measures when he deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, though, as The Independent's Inside Washington newsletter flagged on Monday, that move led to his approval rating dropping.

And much of the deployment of the National Guard has proven to be policing theatre, given that guardsmen and women have been patrolling the tony Georgetown neighbourhood.

Washington, DC is an overwhelmingly Democratic city that has also seen a large slice of its workforce laid off thanks to the chaotic cuts unleashed by Trump's former consigliere Elon Musk and his apprentice at the Department of Government Effieincy, Edward Coristine, whom right-wing influencer Benny Johnson insisted receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Trump having troops roaming the city will likely not land well with the public nationally or in the district. But that's not the only area where Trump has finally removed the handcuffs.

Last week, after a prolonged pause, Trump resumed his "Liberation Day" tariffs. Trump had initially paused them the week after he announced them in April, saying he noticed the bond market had gotten "a little queasy."

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, had gone on Fox Business to speak with Maria Bartiromo, one of Trump's favourite pundits, the day before the pause. But this time, Trump is brooking no opposition from the lords of finance. Earlier this month, he responded to a poor jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics by sacking the chief statistician and nominating EJ Antoni, an alumnus of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025. On Tuesday, the bureau put out a report showing that inflation for the core Consumer Price Index, which includes items for everything except food and energy, rose by 0.3 percent and inflation overall rose by 0.2 percent in July. And core CPI also rose by 3.1 percent in the past year. But Trump has not backed down. In response, he blasted Goldman Sachs's CEO, David Solomon, after a report by the investment titan showing that consumers are eating 22 percent of the tariffs. Clearly, Trump is not afraid of the fallout and believes that if he just gets the right people, he will get the result.

Then there's the matter of Russia and Vladimir Putin. On Friday, he will host the Russian leader in Alaska as he hopes to bring an end to Moscow's war in Ukraine. In recent months, Trump has seemed to come around on Russia, expressing his frustration with Putin, realising that the rest of the Western world already knows: Putin has no interest in ending the war unless he can claim territory he believes rightfully belongs to Russia. This will be a stark contrast to the 2018 summit in Helsinki, when he seemed to brush off American intelligence and sided with Putin's denial that Russia intervened in the 2016 election. That earned him severe criticism, not the least of which came from the late John McCain.

Now, McCain is dead and most of the old school Republican hawks have left the Senate. The ones who remain will not put up a fight. Instead, Trump gets to host Russia's president on American soil and, as if to make an even bigger point, he's hosting it in the home state of Lisa Murkowski, a Russia hawk and perpetual Trump critic. Trump knows that no matter what, he can push Murkowski and she will not push back. During Trump's press conference announcing the DC takeover, he said that police can "do whatever the hell they want." Trump clearly believes he can do the same. The question now is what will the consequences be of an unfettered Trump?