So Tell Me, What Is The Difference Between Them?

Person A is firing staff, having them arrested and replacing them with cronies.
Person B wants to fire staff, have them arrested and replace them with cronies.
Is there a difference between the two? The first is Putin and person B is Trump.

Top Russian military officials are being arrested. Why is it happening?
AP News
BY  EMMA BURROWS
May 24, 2024

It began last month with the arrest of a Russian deputy defense minister. Then the head of the ministry’s personnel directorate was hauled into court. This week, two more senior military officials were detained. All face charges of corruption, which they have denied.

The arrests began after President Vladimir Putin began his fifth term and shuffled his ally, longtime Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, into a new post.

It immediately raised questions about whether Putin was reasserting control over the Defense Ministry amid the war in Ukraine, whether a turf battle had broken out between the military and the security services, or whether some other scenario was playing out behind the Kremlin’s walls.

[…]

Putin wants everyone to have “a skeleton in their closet,” security expert Mark Galeotti said on a recent podcast. If the state has compromising material on key officials, it can cherry-pick whom to target, he added.

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Trump vows to fire bureaucrats. Here’s why Biden is trying to stop him.
The Christian Science Monitor
By Caitlin Babcock & Sophie Hills
May 7, 2024

For decades, American presidents routinely offered government jobs to political allies – and expected those employees would do their bidding in return.

Then in 1881, a campaign supporter who did not win such a favor assassinated President James Garfield. That proved to be a tipping point, spurring the creation of a civil service mostly staffed by nonpartisan workers selected on merit, not on political allegiance.

Nearly a century and a half later, the two presidential front-runners are debating whether to keep it that way.

Former President Donald Trump has threatened to fire thousands of “rogue bureaucrats” if he wins the election this fall, as part of his plan to dismantle what he calls “the deep state.” In response, the Biden administration has issued a new rule, which goes into effect this month, shielding the civil service against “corruption and partisan interference.”

You might remember that after losing the election in November 2020 that Trump…

Trump administration removes senior defense officials and installs loyalists, triggering alarm at Pentagon
CNN
By Barbara Starr, Zachary Cohen and Ryan Browne
November 13, 2020

The Trump administration has carried out sweeping changes atop the Defense Department’s civilian leadership structure, removing several of its most senior officials and replacing them with perceived loyalists to the President.

The flurry of changes, announced by the Department of Defense in a statement roughly 24 hours after President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, has put officials inside the Pentagon on edge and fueled a growing sense of alarm among military and civilian officials, who are concerned about what could come next.

Four senior civilian officials have been fired or have resigned since Monday, including Esper, his chief of staff and the top officials overseeing policy and intelligence. They were replaced by perceived Trump loyalists, including a controversial figure who promoted fringe conspiracy theories and called former President Barack Obama a terrorist.

A senior defense official told CNN late Tuesday that “it appears we are done with the beheadings for now,” referring to the wave of ousted civilian leaders, including Esper.

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So tell me what is the difference between Putin and Trump?

To paraphrase Maya Angelou, “When someone tells you that they want to be a dictator, believe them the first time.”