In the days and weeks that follow the Independence Day holiday and on into the month of August, for the political movers and shakers of Washington, along with others from the influence-peddling trade (corporate representatives, lobbyists and still sleazier types), foreign diplomats, influential media figures, and many more from among permanent career bureaucrats, this is the time for summer vacations, backyard BBQs, extended weekend beach parties and even the recharging that comes from mid-afternoon naps on the back porch chaise lounge or a hammock.

But not so much in 2019, perhaps.

Why so? First of all, for a select group of those who would be the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, their campaign staffers and the journalists who must follow them around the country from fish or steak fries to church hall meet ’n greets to “rubber chicken” dinner fundraisers. As a result, there really is no summer break for most of them. That is to be expected in the run-up to a presidential general election, of course.

But the administration of Donald Trump has now stirred in some special ingredients for this dish. Fresh from his Fourth of July salute to himself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (complete with those tanks on the Mall, and the stealth bombers and the F-35 joint strike fighter jets screeching overhead), just as the British Conservative Party has entered the final lap of its extended process to pick a successor for the hapless Theresa May, Trump went on the attack against Britain’s ambassador in Washington — thereby inserting himself ever further into British domestic politics.

This attack is a unique version of that richly-patinaed “special relationship” between the two nations ever since World War II and a tie that has been the bedrock for western postwar security and political architecture.

This particular melodrama began when a string of confidential and secret messages written by or signed off by British Ambassador to the US Kim Darroch — in carrying out his responsibilities to keep his own government effectively informed about the playpen that is Trump’s Washington — were leaked somehow by someone to the British tabloid, The Daily Mail. Among other observations, in reports that used some richly evocative language, one of the kinder things said was that the US president was “inept”.

Anyone who is not yet dead knows that similar harsh criticism and sharply worded, deeply derogatory descriptions of the Trumpian circus have become the commonplace of media and scholarly observations of this White House. (And diplomats from yet other nations have told journalists anonymously much the same thing.)

Once that leak occurred, the juicy bits quickly made their way into the global news stream. And then this became a plaything of the commentariat and social media junkies everywhere. Inevitably, the Donald Trump tweet machine then revved up into hysterical, warp-speed overdrive, denouncing the UK ambassador personally, his words, his entertainment capabilities, his experience, his deeply deficient intellect, and even the colour choices for his socks and neckties. (Ok, not that last bit, but everything else.)

Within days, Darroch acknowledged he had become a diplomatic dead man walking, especially as Trump said he would now have nothing to do with Darroch. And so, after a few days of some stoic, dignified silence on Darroch’s part, he smelled the “coffefe” and turned in his resignation.

He had received some strong support from Theresa May — who is herself just about out the door — but far less than rousing support from Boris Johnson, the man who almost certainly very shortly will become the new head of the Conservative Party, and thus prime minister. Johnson’s rival for the job, meanwhile, Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt, came out swinging on Darroch’s behalf in the televised debate between the two rival candidates, but Hunt himself will almost certainly become electoral roadkill, once the 160,000 members of the Tory Party render their verdict by 22 July.

This has understandably disconcerted both the British diplomatic establishment as well as pretty much every other diplomat assigned to Washington — or likely to be assigned there in the future as long as Donald Trump is president. After all, if a diplomat feels their confidential, but frank observations about Washington or Donald Trump can lead to some very public verbal abuse and threats of official Coventry if anybody else then leaks the reporting, such a presidential response will cast a chill over diplomatic observations and the fear of reprisals if diplomats do their jobs.

Along the way, it has also worried British officials about just how permeable their diplomatic and other confidential correspondence systems are. Moreover, their wimping out like this by letting a Trumpian temper tantrum determine who the UK sends abroad officially is just as worrisome, prompting some serious head-scratching over just who is in charge of the British foreign policy mechanism.

How the paper got hold of the material in the first place also remains unclear. Was it from the hands of a disgruntled staffer in the British Foreign Office; was it by someone who thought they were currying favour in advance with the presumptive Trump administration-Johnson government by rooting out an influential “remainer” from government service; or was it even the work of operatives acting on behalf of a third country, eager to further confuse American-British co-operation? Or was it something else entirely?

Now, if this diplomatic mess wasn’t enough to keep everyone off balance in Washington and on the edges of their respective seats, and away from contemplating which summer vacation reading list to follow, an unrelated mess has also struck the Trump universe. This time it is beginning to consume the secretary of labour, Alexander Acosta.

In brief, Acosta had been the head federal prosecutor in south Florida when billionaire financial wizard (and former Trump buddy of whom Trump flippantly had said, yes, his friend liked younger women) Jeffrey Epstein had received an extraordinarily lenient sentence for his sleazy, illegal, frequently criminal treatment of a veritable convention’s worth of young women. Many of these individuals were below the age of legal consent — that is, they were children — when Epstein had lured them into his mansion.

Now, a new case in New York of yet more of Epstein’s predation is bringing up Acosta’s troubling role during that earlier Florida settlement. That agreement had specified Epstein would check himself into jail each night during a sentence of fewer than two years, but under which he was also left alone to pursue his life during the daytime — and in which the victims were left out of the settlement negotiations. Yes, Epstein ended up being listed on a sexual offenders database, but that apparently did not restrain him very much in New York City.

Acosta did himself very few favours with a Wednesday media conference in which his emotional intelligence quotient (or, rather, the near lack of it) was fully on show in offering virtually no sympathy for the victims. Given the president’s own troubling behaviour with women other than his wife/wives and a photographically documented friendship with Epstein, this mess is helping refocus attention on the demonstrated misogyny of the incumbent president and thus the more general moral miasma of the Trump administration.

The official death watch of Alexander Acosta as labour secretary has now been officially started. Observers will be parsing every White House utterance remotely related to sexual bad behaviour by anybody, refocus well-known past bad-boy behaviour by the president, and scrutinise closely the way Acosta supporters begin to edge their way to the fire exits.

All of this speaks to the larger question of the perceived lack of any restraints on behaviour among the Trumpians, the absence of moral guardrails among those in Trump’s world, as well as a willingness to believe anything goes whenever his administration’s hoplites do what they do. Greg Sargent, writing in The Washington Post, put his finger on the rot afflicting Trump’s Washington when he wrote:

“In all kinds of ways, of course, Trump himself demonstrates how deeply the culture of impunity has penetrated the GOP. We’ve seen bottomless self-dealing and a refusal to show minimal transparency on his business holdings; extensive and potentially criminal efforts to derail the Russia investigation; the refusal to hold the Saudis accountable for the dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi; maximal resistance to any and all congressional oversight; the turning loose of Attorney General William P. Barr on his political critics; Acosta’s potential survival; and so much more — much of it with nary a peep from Republicans.

“What Trump seems to have developed here is a kind of full-saturation, totally unabashed flaunting of impunity as something to be worn as a badge of honor. In retrospect, that remarkable closing of ranks behind Trump despite the lewd video foreshadowed much of what we’re seeing now.”

As the Washington summer wears on, we should brace ourselves for yet more monsters from the deep, miasmic swamp that is Trump’s world. Meanwhile, the federal courts are now wrestling — yet again — with the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. If the decision tips towards overturning it, there will be a huge bunfight about whether the Republicans want to throw millions of people off their healthcare due to their pre-existing conditions, and then among the Democrats contending for the presidential nomination about how best to move towards securing healthcare for the general population.

No rest for the weary these next few months. DM