Okay here is the scenario. You are the manager of a store. A lower level employee who has been loyal to you and has served your customers well has been accused by a customer who usually always frequents another store and has been known to publicly denigrate your store of mistreating customers. Mistreating customers in such a way that it not only hurts your store but actually involves bigotry. Without doing any investigation you immediately fire this loyal, well qualified employee throwing them out on the street with a sneer. It later comes to your attention that this complaining "customer" actually had a hidden agenda and your loyal employee actually did the opposite of what they were accused of. Embaressed, you rush into the street, apologize and ask the employee to return. The loyal employee is hurt and feels betrayed and goes on her own way. You return to your store with a shrug, maybe a little wiser for wear.
A month later you actually witness on of you assistant managers abusing a customer and engaging in the type of bigotry at least as bad, as possibly worse, than what your loyal employee did. This assistant manager by the way is also publicly denigrating you and your store and treats you with disrespect in front on your employees and openly plots behind your back. You don't really say anything, but the customers really start to complain about this assistant manager. The assistant manager finally mumbles a half apology to the customers. The customers do not accept the apology. They believe the behavior to be atrocious. You, however, as store manager decided to accept the apology for the customers (?) and then publicly state that the assistant manager will keep his job.
All right, what does this say about you as a manager. Well it says that you are a pretty bad manager who doesn't care about your customers or the reputation of your store and you are headed for a fall - that's obvious. No management book in the world would say that this is a good way to handle your employees. It is almost pathological. But worse, what does it say about your ethics, your morals, the degree to which your other customers support you? What possible explanation can you give for treating the loyal employee one way and the craven assistant manager another.
Okay, let's add some additional information to the moral equation. Let's say that the loyal employee is from a disenfranchised group, and comes from a lower middle class family and that the craven assistant manager is from one of the top families in town and has very powerful friends. Now you are heading into Robert Deniro in Casino territory. Except even Deniroe fired the well connected floor manager who was incompetent in spite of his connections.
There is something very wrong in the White House when its ethics and managerment style can't even measure up to the Mob.