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(CNN) - The execution and aftermath of the raids that killed Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were as different as the presidents who supervised them. But in one area they converged: Barack Obama and Donald Trump wanted to see the operations.
The way each leader handled the decisive moment tells as much about his mentality as about his foreign policy. Before, during and after the raids that struck down two highly sought-after terrorists, Obama and Trump adopted divergent approaches and encountered different reactions from the American public.
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However, both recognized the weight that the moments carried for their legacy. And both wanted to see while it happened.
"As if you were watching a movie," Trump recalled Sunday after announcing the death of the ISIS leader in detailed graphic terms.
"Essentially we were watching what was happening in real time," Obama told CNN in 2016, five years after the Navy SEALs eliminated the brain on September 11.
It is easy to understand the momentum. In the third year of their presidencies, the raids entailed the possibility of vindication and the risk of a devastating failure. He was stalking the ghost of Jimmy Carter's legacy, whose mishandling of a high-risk foreign policy issue, the hostage crisis in Iran, may have cost him a second term.
Obama exercised caution later and avoided revealing details of the raid; Trump was eager to provoke the media and presented many of his details himself. And while Obama and his advisors were careful not to inflame Bin Laden's followers, Trump set out to paint Baghdadi's last moments with a sensationalist description of "groans, cries and screams."
The pictures
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The photographs of the two moments capture leaders in extreme situations. Trump, with a stone face and a formal suit and tie, sits at the head of a long table in the Situation Room, surrounded by equally serious advisers, some in military uniforms, while the raid took place on large screens. The central, literal and symbolic figure, Trump projects the sense of authority he often craved as commander in chief.
The rigid posture and the imposing presidential seal contrast with the photo of Obama, with a polo shirt and a jacket, leaning forward while his team snuggled around the laptops when the news from Abbottabad that "Geronimo" - the name arrived in code given to Bin Laden - he had been killed. Obama, slightly off center with his cornered chair, is not the natural focus point of the eye.
The photos are from different rooms: Trump's was taken in the John F. Kennedy conference room, the iconic command post that plays in movies and television shows where presidents are informed about highly classified missions.
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Obama was informed before Bin Laden's raid from the same position as chief of table where Trump is shown observing the Baghdad mission. He sat there while Admiral William McRaven, joint commander of special operations, narrated the mission from an outpost in Afghanistan.
But later, when word spread that there was a better view down the hall, he and his team headed to the smaller conference room where a video was played on the general's laptop. This is where the moment was captured, crowded with other people, including a surprised Hillary Clinton.
While both presidents wanted to see the operations they personally ordered to bring down the most wanted terrorists of their time, there is not much more in common in how they handled the high profile decision and the subsequent exaltation of mission successes.
When he took office, Obama made it clear to his first CIA director, Leon Panetta, that finding Bin Laden was a priority. Nine months before the raid, Obama was first informed about the possibility that the United States had located the terrorist in a complex in Pakistan. But without certainty, Obama had a choice.
“I had been inclined to make the decision quite early in the discussions. But I retained the decision until I had to make it. And in the end, what I really appreciated was that we had an honest debate, ”Obama told CNN in 2016.“ It was, in that way, emblematic of presidential decision making, you always work with probabilities. ”
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Obama spent at least part of the period prior to Bin Laden's mission adjusting the jokes for the White House Correspondents' Dinner that year, including a few aimed at Trump, whose relentless and racist hunt for Obama's birth certificate that week pushed Obama to publish the document. Authorized the mission the same week.
As a tuxedo, Obama criticized a pointless Trump for his decision-making in a reality show: "You fired Gary Busey!" Meanwhile his team was making final preparations for the raid that would be launched in a matter of hours.
Meanwhile, Trump began discussing possible operations to eliminate Baghdad in recent weeks when surveillance showed the ISIS leader in a complex near Idlib, Syria. He was presented with options for a raid at the resort last week and made the decision to move on.
On the day of the raid, Trump woke up at Camp David after organizing an anniversary party for his daughter and son-in-law, played golf in his field in Virginia with Senator Lindsey Graham and Major League Baseball commissioner, and returned to the House Blanca around 4:30 pm ET. The group met in the Situation Room 30 minutes later.
Unlike Obama, who returned to the White House residence to play cards while the Navy SEAL team flew from Afghanistan to Pakistan and only returned when they were on the ground, Trump remained in the Situation Room during the mission.
When he was asked on Sunday to describe the difficult decisions he had to make along the way, Trump said, "Well, just death."
"I am sending a lot of brilliant warriors, these are the best warriors in the world," he said.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
