📖 The Authoritarian Playbook: Putin vs. Trump

Symbol of democracy under strain: a courthouse column, cracked but still standing, reflecting the hinge moment when institutions risk bending toward authoritarianism.

🌍 Editorial Note — Special Edition

This essay is published as a Special Edition on EP Resource Page. While our primary focus is on environmental sustainability, we recognize that the health of our planet is inseparable from the health of our democracies. How societies govern themselves shapes the choices they make about climate, resources, and the common good.

As a Canadian observer, I offer this reflection not as partisan commentary, but as a historical observation on the patterns of power and democracy. It is shared here because sustainability is not only about energy and the environment — it is also about the resilience of the systems that protect them.

Democracy does not collapse in a single day. It erodes slowly—through words, laws, institutions, and loyalties—until what remains is only a façade. This comparison between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump is not drawn from partisan leanings or speculative judgment. Instead, it rests on observable patterns of behavior and historical significance, measured against how each leader has engaged with the democratic systems they inherited.

Putin assumed power in 1999, inheriting a Russia still staggering from the Soviet collapse. Institutions were weak, corruption rampant, and state authority fragmented. Trump, by contrast, rose within the United States—a democracy with centuries of constitutional tradition and strong institutional guardrails.

👉 Putin inherited fragility, Trump resilience. Yet both reached for the same authoritarian script.

This contrast matters: fragility allowed Putin to capture the state outright, while resilience forced Trump to test boundaries more indirectly. But in both cases, the strategies reveal a universal authoritarian playbook.

1. Control the Narrative

• Putin’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Nationalized major television networks, silenced independent outlets.

    
    

  • Built a propaganda machine portraying himself as Russia’s guarantor of order.

    
    

  • Criminalized dissent through “foreign agent” laws and censorship.

    
    

• Trump’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Could not seize media directly, but discredited it relentlessly: “fake news,” “enemy of the people.”

    
    

  • Built a loyal ecosystem (Fox News, Truth Social, partisan influencers).

    
    

  • Flooded public discourse with disinformation, making truth contested.

    
    

2. Manipulate Elections

• Putin’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Rewrote electoral laws to disqualify genuine opponents.

    
    

  • Stage-managed elections to preserve a veneer of legitimacy.

    
    

  • Reset presidential term limits in 2020, enabling him to rule potentially until 2036.

    
    

• Trump’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Could not rewrite U.S. law, so attacked legitimacy itself with pre-emptive fraud claims.

    
    

  • Pressured state officials (“Find me 11,780 votes”) and contested certified results.

    
    

  • Encouraged an extra-legal attempt on January 6, 2021, to overturn the outcome.

3. Weaken Institutions

• Putin’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Subordinated courts, legislature, and regional governments to the Kremlin.

    
    

  • Replaced elected governors with Kremlin appointees, hollowing federalism.

    
    

  • Leveraged the FSB and judiciary against political rivals.

    
    

• Trump’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Tried to politicize the DOJ, FBI, and intelligence agencies.

    
    

  • Attacked judges when rulings opposed him.

    
    

  • Undermined Congress with partisan loyalty tests.

    
    

  • Most significantly, the U.S. Supreme Court has now granted expansive presidential immunity, effectively placing Trump—and future presidents—above the law for “official acts.” This ruling represents a hinge moment: where America’s institutional safeguards risk bending toward the same legal untouchability that Putin long secured in Russia.

4. Judicial Capture

• Putin’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Consolidated total control over the judiciary, ensuring courts served Kremlin interests.

    
    

  • Used trials as political theater to humiliate and neutralize opponents.

    
    

  • Eliminated the very possibility of legal accountability.

    
    

• Trump’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Reshaped the judiciary with loyal appointments, especially at the Supreme Court level.

    
    

  • Leveraged judicial rulings to expand executive authority.

    
    

  • The immunity decision signals a dangerous precedent: the executive may act without fear of legal consequence. What began as a strategy of undermining institutions now inches closer to capturing them, aligning Trump’s trajectory with Putin’s model.

  
  

5. Cultivate Loyalty Networks

• Putin’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Built a patronage system binding oligarchs, governors, and security chiefs to his survival.

    
    

  • Neutralized rivals through exile, imprisonment, or assassination.

    
    

  • Enforced loyalty through fear and dependence.

    
    

• Trump’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Valued personal loyalty over institutional duty.

    
    

  • Removed “disloyal” officials and elevated hand-picked loyalists.

    
    

  • Relied on the MAGA base as his ultimate political shield.

    
    

6. Oligarch Networks and Indirect Financiers

• Putin’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Russia’s oligarchs, born from the chaotic privatization of the 1990s, amassed fortunes.

    
    

  • Under Putin, they were forced into a pact: keep your wealth, but serve Kremlin interests.

    
    

  • Oligarch wealth became a direct financial engine for authoritarian consolidation.

    
    

• Trump’s Playbook:

  
  

  • The U.S. doesn’t produce oligarchs in the post-Soviet mold, but Trump cultivated oligarch-like financiers:

    
    

    • Mega-donors like Sheldon Adelson, Peter Thiel, and the Koch network reshaped party priorities.

    • Corporate beneficiaries of deregulation and tax cuts became quiet backers.

    • Family and cronies leveraged political access for private enrichment (e.g., Kushner’s Gulf investment fund).

    • Elon Musk emerged as both financier and propagator: pledging millions to pro-Trump Super PACs, restoring Trump’s platform on X, and shaping the digital information sphere in Trump’s favor. His dual role as billionaire donor and media gatekeeper positions him as an emblemic example of American-style oligarch.

      
      

  • Unlike Putin’s direct coercion, Trump’s network functions through indirect financing—campaign donations, PACs, media platforms, and loyalty-based patronage—creating a parallel oligarchy that sustains his political survival.

    
    

7. Reframe Democracy as Weakness

• Putin’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Cast democracy as chaos, corruption, and a Western imposition.

    
    

  • Justified authoritarianism as restoring Russia’s greatness.

    
    

• Trump’s Playbook:

  
  

  • Portrayed democracy as “rigged” against “real Americans.”

    
    

  • Delegitimized compromise as betrayal.

    
    

  • Suggested only his rule reflects the true will of the people.

    
    

⚖️ Bottom Line

• Putin dismantled democracy structurally—by capturing the state.

  
  

• Trump has sought to dismantle democracy normatively—by capturing the people’s trust and turning it against the state.

  
  

But with the Supreme Court’s recognition of near-absolute presidential immunity, and the rise of oligarch-like financiers such as Elon Musk, Trump’s trajectory edges closer to Putin’s. This is the hinge moment: when the erosion of democratic norms risks becoming structural transformation.

Delegitimize → Destabilize → Centralize.

Russia demonstrates the end state of that sequence. From a Canadian vantage point, these parallels are not partisan judgments, but historical observations. Fragile democracies can be captured swiftly, as in Russia; resilient ones can be bent more slowly, as in America. The lesson is clear: the hinge is creaking, and it is up to citizens and institutions to decide whether the door to democracy remains open.

Written simply as a Canadian observer’s reflection—trusting that history’s patterns may guide thought.

📚 Resources Consulted

1. Supreme Court Ruling on Presidential Immunity

• The landmark case Trump v. United States (2024) granted former presidents absolute immunity for core constitutional acts and presumptive immunity for other official acts. Peoples | Carnegie Endowment

  
  

• Detailed analysis—including concerns about its implications for accountability—by the ACLU:American Civil Liberties Union

  
  

• Commentary highlighting the democratic risks

  
  

• Additional scholarly context on executive power and immunity

2. Comparative Democratic Backsliding

• The Carnegie Endowment explores U.S. democratic erosion under Trump and compares it with other nations

  
  

• The Journal of Democracy discusses common patterns of democratic decline:Journal of Democracy

  
  

• Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die offers theoretical foundation and directly comments on Trump’s impact in comparative context.

3. Background on Presidential Immunity Doctrine

• In Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), the Supreme Court ruled presidents have absolute civil immunity for official acts.

  
  

• Clinton v. Jones (1997) clarified that immunity doesn't extend to personal (pre-office) actions

Read more >> Blog | EP Resource Page, or search for more interesting or related blogs.