How to delete infinitely recurring directories
It is certainly interesting to see an infinite folder structure in the trash so naturally, the typical deletion process would take infinite time. Something went horribly wrong somewhere.

What can you try?
Close all programs (reboot if necessary to interrupt the current deletion process) and try Running First Aid on your boot volume. Be sure to disconnect any attached drives such as TimeMachine backups or network shares to eliminate them from the equation. 

You mentioned having tried the sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash command to no avail, but how about sudo rm -rf /Volumes/*/.Trashes? The full article is here in case you are looking for a little background information. Your macOS system will rebuild the .Trashes folder next time it needs it.

As far as the "You can’t open the Trash because it’s being emptied." message is concerned, this is usually fixed through a Finder restart or better yet, system restart.

Let me know if that makes sense and how it works out for you.