In the current scandal, so often compared to Watergate, there’s a tendency to seek direct parallels. This is enhanced by the clear threat to Special Counsel Robert Mueller from the president, complete with reports that Trump ordered White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, and backed down only when McGahn threatened to resign.

The current, unnamed scandal won’t work in the same way, and the search for a Saturday Night Massacre is misguided for two reasons. First, people are already being fired. And second, even when they’re not, Trump is accomplishing many of the same things that would otherwise be accomplished with firings via other means.

Even without one, big showdown over firings, Trump is already pushing staffers out at prodigious speed. (This has inspired some pundits to brand it a “slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre.”) First was FBI Director James Comey. This week, Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, was pushed into earlier retirement after massive pressure from the White House. (Axios reported that Trump had previously wanted McCabe fired, but that Wray refused; on Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. argued McCabe had been fired.) The president has expressed regret for appointing Attorney General Jeff Sessions because of Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation and said Sessions ought to resign, though Trump reportedly rejected a resignation letter. He has also variously threatened or tried to fire Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed and is overseeing Mueller because Sessions is recused. In the Oval Office Friday around noon, Trump wouldn’t say whether he had confidence in Rosenstein. “You figure that one out,” he said.

In a tweet Friday morning, Trump said:

The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018

Not only is the president openly feuding with parts of the executive branch, he elides the fact that the top leadership of the FBI and Justice Department are, with McCabe and Comey’s departures, entirely appointed by his own administration.

If the goal is to purge officials who Trump thinks represent some sort of threat to him, that’s already under way. But Trump also doesn’t have to purge them to achieve what he wants. He just has to create an environment that stifles things he believes represent a threat to him.

The president has been surprisingly open about his desire to release the memo in order to discredit the Russia investigation, even before he had read it. He has been warned time and again against actually removing Mueller, but if he can’t do that, trying to relegate it to politically suspect territory does the trick. He’s used other methods, too, like asking James Comey for loyalty, asking that Comey let Michael Flynn off for lying to the FBI, asking McCabe for whom he had voted, and asking Rosenstein whether he was “on my team.” Furthermore, he has proven surprisingly averse to actually firing people.