Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Gerardo]

[snip] As for your assessment of my imbecility, it is met with total disdain. [snip]

 

This explains it.

[Chas_P]

This explains it.

Your sense of moral superiority is also met with total disdain. May the Schwartz be with you.

[pilowsky]

This explains it.

 

It's exactly the same as arguing about an icecream with a 2-year-old.

[johnu]

It’s hard to know how to respond to claims that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” That may well be accurate, but what if you start with the premise that there are no guns? Wouldn’t that provide an alternate method?

 

You could point out that in Uvalde, at least 19 so called good guys with guns, rifles, bulletproof vests, and ballistic shields did absolutely nothing for over an hour while potential surviving victims bled out and died, and others were shot and killed. Another good guy with a gun let the mass murderer into the school without a shot or any effective follow up.

 

You could also point out that in Parkland, Florida where 17 people were killed, there was a similar failure by police. One policeman was indicted for child neglect for hiding outside the school, and 4 were initially fired for failing to perform their duties.

 

You could also point out that another way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to let the bad guy keep shooting until there aren't any people left to shoot. And if the bad guy starts shooting first, there's probably going to be a lot of dead people, even good guys with guns before that bad guy gets taken down.

 

Am I blaming the police who made a self preservation "business" decision to not do anything and let the gunmen continue killing people? Well, they made the career decision to join law enforcement and it turns out they made the wrong career choice. Do I blame people who are against gun control who say “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”? Absolutely Yes I do.

[Winstonm]

You're going to need a truth and reconciliation commision.

You can't redraw the Mason-Dixon line and call the bottom half jail.

More than 20% of the US population appear to think that Trump is the second coming of Robert E Lee.

I’ve long said the failure of the Civil War was not hanging all the traitors.

[pilowsky]

I've long said the failure of the Civil War was not hanging all the traitors.

 

Good to see you've taken my point on board in a considered way.

[mikeh]

It's exactly the same as arguing about an icecream with a 2-year-old.

The two year old may become more rational as he or she ages😀

[mikeh]

Lawyers are known the world over for being loquacious. I commend you here for being probably the most loquacious I've ever seen. As for your assessment of my imbecility, it is met with total disdain. We just don't see things the same way. I could adjudge you as an "imbecile", but I don't. I just don't agree with you. Does that make me right? Of course not. Does it make you right? Of course not. It just means we don't all see things the same way. I wish you well on your trip down the moral superiority highway. You go your way. I'll go mine. And may the Schwartz be with you.

Lol

 

Once, just once I’d like to see you post some argument in favour of your position. Instead all we get is ‘this is what I say and I have a right to say it’

 

Nobody disagrees with your right to say it. What I think some of would like is to see whether these repeated statements arise from a consideration of the issues and facts or are simply the result of unthinking dogma learned, probably, before you attained an age at which critical thinking became possible…if that ever did happen for you😀

 

Absent some articulated set of principles that lead you to conclude that your position is morally sound, pilowsky’s description of you seems apt

 

But I’m wasting my time. In my experience people like you don’t even understand the point. Prove me wrong?

[y66]

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-28/trump-has-steered-himself-into-a-legal-morass?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=220628&utm_campaign=author_18529680

 

We’ve run out of words to describe the magnitude of the evidence unearthed by the House Jan. 6 committee, or the enormity of what former President Donald Trump was responsible for in the period between the 2020 election and when he left office. But Tuesday’s surprise hearing with star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, the close assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, topped them all.

 

In two absolutely gripping hours that filled in one important detail after another, Hutchinson testified that, among other things, Trump knew that the rioters he urged to march on the Capitol were armed — and he wanted to keep it that way, because after all their weapons were not to be used against him.

 

So the takeaways:

 

I don’t think anyone can doubt that Trump committed crimes, based on the testimony we’ve heard. Serious crimes. We heard on Tuesday that White House counsel Pat Cipollone warned that the White House was moving into breaking the law. We also heard testimony that Meadows was on the list of those who sought pardons from the outgoing president after the events of Jan 6.

 

We still have no idea what Attorney General Merrick Garland is thinking, although we know that the Justice Department investigation is proceeding up the ladder. We also don’t know that Garland could get convictions or, if so, for what exactly. Still, we’re seeing more legal experts say that Trump is in serious jeopardy.

 

Despite that, as the political scientist Sarah Binder suggested, the committee target isn’t Merrick Garland: “It’s GOP elite — get them off the sidelines and into the fight to keep Trump from ever holding power again.”

 

That could be true. After all, a grand jury could have heard Hutchinson’s testimony in private. Today wasn’t so much about delivering new evidence (although there was plenty that had not yet been reported). It was about making a very public case about just how lawless Trump had become. And about how much evidence is lined up against him, which could matter for those deciding just how to position themselves right now.

 

I’ve found political scientist Richard Neustadt’s explanation of the inherent weakness of the presidency to be extremely helpful in understanding Trump in office. One of the key points is that presidents generally can’t get things done by giving orders (as opposed to bargaining and persuading), and that trying to govern by edict has all kinds of likely costs to anyone tries it.

 

So I couldn’t help but enjoy — if that’s the correct word — how many orders Trump gave before and on Jan. 6 that he couldn’t enforce. Perhaps the most consequential of those was, as we heard last week, how Trump tried to fire his attorney general but was rolled by the White House and the Justice Department.

 

If that was the high Neustadt example, we learned on Tuesday of perhaps a new low: The president repeatedly trying to lead the march to the Capitol as his own White House staff and the Secret Service were telling him he couldn’t — ultimately leading to his attempt to grab the steering wheel of the car he was in. And failing. We’ve seen this sort of episode before, in a way. President George W. Bush wanted to return directly to the White House on Sept. 11, 2001, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him. But Trump’s version of it was both chilling and pathetic.

 

To be clear: It’s not that presidents can’t do these things. It’s that most things take bargaining, deal-making and skill to get done — not issuing orders. Trump never developed the skills needed to make things happen, and so he was regularly left to, well, throw his plate against the wall in frustration. The two chief executives who relied the most on governing by edict have been Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, and they both demonstrate how dangerous that is to both the president and to the nation.

 

I also can’t stop thinking of Trump as Jafar, the villain from Disney’s “Aladdin.” Jafar was undermined when he was tricked into wishing to be an all-powerful genie — not realizing that part of being a genie was, as the story goes, being the servant to whoever owns the magic bottle.

 

Trump never understood that the position he aspired to and won is a job with 330 million bosses. Trump trying to grab control of that vehicle while saying “I’m the f*** president, take me up to the Capitol now!” is the result.

 

He was hardly the only president to fall into this trap. There’s a famous anecdote in which a young military aide tries to steer President Lyndon Johnson in the correct direction. “That's your helicopter over there, sir,” the aide said, only to have Johnson reply: “Son, they are all my helicopters.”

 

Of course Johnson — and Trump — were wrong. They’re not his helicopters. Or his car. Or his Oval Office. Or his china that he smashed against the wall. All those things belong to the American people. And that’s why the presidency is set up the way it is, in the system of separated institutions sharing powers, and why presidents who attempt to govern by edict court disaster.

 

At least, that’s how it’s been since George Washington took the oath of office — to preserve, defend and protect the Constitution. Trump took the oath, but he never understood it or the presidency, and he tried to overthrow the Constitution. Whatever the legal situation may eventually be, it’s hard to believe that anyone could follow these hearings and not reach that conclusion. And to be terrified that he came close to succeeding, and that he or someone else will no doubt try again.

[y66]

This is basically a campaign commercial for (Florida Gov.) Ron DeSantis 2024

[kenberg]

From the cited Bernstein article:

 

"If that was the high Neustadt example, we learned on Tuesday of perhaps a new low: The president repeatedly trying to lead the march to the Capitol as his own White House staff and the Secret Service were telling him he couldn’t — ultimately leading to his attempt to grab the steering wheel of the car he was in. And failing. We’ve seen this sort of episode before, in a way. President George W. Bush wanted to return directly to the White House on Sept. 11, 2001, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him. But Trump’s version of it was both chilling and pathetic."

It got me wondering to what extent the president can say where he wants to go and to what extent the Secret Service can overrule him. I know it's a side issue but I was just wondering. I think, but I am not sure, that inside the Capitol Secret Service agents could compel Senators and Representatives to go with them to a shelter whether they wanted to or not, a mob was coming in. And I would expect the same to be true for the president if he were inside the Capitol. Otoh, I would expect that if Bil Clinton wanted to go to McDonald's for a Big Mac he got to do so, although perhaps he had to tell them in advance. Maybe someone knows the rules? I don't.

Anyway, we get the picture. Trump knew people were coming with weapons, he was fine with them bringing weapons to his speech since he knew the weapons were not going to be used against him, he fired up the mob, told them, hopefully including those with weapons, to march on the Capitol, he told them he would meet them there and planned to do so.

Perhaps someone can still say this was just a tourist event. Or they can acknowledge it wasn't a tourist event but say Trump was not planning an insurrection. But it is getting very hard to believe that even the person saying such a thing can actually believe it to be true. Republicans have to acknowledge the facts that are clearly in front of their face and then hopefully we can discuss where we go from here. It's not a matter of Trump being a Conservative, he isn't. Or of Trump being on the Right Wing, a vague term but I would say Pence is on the Right Wing, I imagine Pence would agree, and he has no resemblance to Trump. To say that Trump is on the Christian Right is absurd. Trump is a failed insurrectionist with no interests beyond his own ego and his fantasies.

Yes I am a Democrat. But I have always had friends who voted for Bush, either Bush, of for Regan, or Eisenhower for that matter although I was too young to vote at the time. These people were Republicans, they were not RINOs. Actually it is Trump that is the RINO. Trump favors Trump, nothing else, and nobody else, matters. So let's try to get back to some sort of normal. I'm fine with listening to a conservative speak of his thoughts on the economy, on education, on defense. And I will listen to Bernie Sanders. I might disagree with both, but Trump is a different case entirely.

[y66]

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=4&emc=edit_dk_20220629&instance_id=65317&nl=dealbook&productCode=DK&regi_id=59211987&segment_id=97112&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F4fc953b4-7c91-5be7-bc27-8a90f9dc01e6&user_id=2d8b72dd84a9ff194896ed87b2d9c72a

 

After Jan. 6, corporations across the nation raced to put out news releases condemning the insurrection, as well as the Republican members of Congress who tried to overturn the election results. Many companies pledged to end or pause donating to those politicians.

 

Fast-forward to today. Whatever your politics, yesterday’s testimony by a former White House aide about President Donald Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 was deeply disturbing. And yet you will most likely hear only one thing from the business community in the coming days: silence.

 

Why?

 

I’ve been spending the past several days at the Aspen Ideas Festival asking chief executives and other leaders that very question. What I hear again and again is that the business community — and perhaps the public at large — has outrage fatigue.

 

But there is something else happening, too: Those who do want to speak out are concerned about retaliation from political officials and a significant portion of the public, in ways they weren’t a year and a half ago.

 

Several C.E.O.s I spoke with pointed to various polls showing that Trump remains popular — in many cases, more popular than President Biden.

 

Others fear being labeled “woke,” and worry about being targeted by outspoken Republicans like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who was once seen as a friend of business but who has aggressively targeted businesses that are out of step with his views.

 

But here is my question for business leaders: After years of talking about moral courage, where is yours?

 

American business has succeeded all of these years because we have been a nation of laws, and a democracy that the world believed in. If that democracy and its laws are not defended, the environment that has allowed American companies to prosper will no longer be a sure thing.

[y66]

From Jennifer Szalai's review of "Why we did it: a travelogue from the Republican road to Hell" by Tim Miller at NYT:

 

Too often, when straining to put some daylight between themselves and the Trump administration, regretful Republicans have reached for elaborate excuses and high-toned rhetoric. The former political operative Tim Miller knows better than to try.

 

The most honorable parts of “Why We Did It,” Miller’s darkly funny (if also profoundly dispiriting) post-mortem/mea culpa, are the ones that dispense with pious pretense. Miller, a millennial who started working in Republican politics when he was 16, depicts himself as someone who was so preoccupied with “the Game” that for years he gave little thought to the degraded culture that his bare-knuckle tactics helped perpetuate. He liked the excitement, the money, the mischief. There was a “bizarre type of fame” that came with “D.C. celebrification,” he writes. He got addicted to the “horse race.” He was in it to win.

“I was favor-trading with people who were causing real-world harm so I could get a pat on the head from some client who wanted self-serving scuttlebutt fed to the rubes,” he writes of his career. But as a self-described P.R. flack, Miller knows how to spin such ugly straw into shiny gold. Who better to identify why his fellow Republicans got sucked under than someone who kept getting pulled back in?

 

The hardcore Trumpists who loved their candidate from the beginning don’t interest Miller. His subjects include colleagues who worked with him nearly a decade ago on the Growth and Opportunity Project, known as the Republican “autopsy,” organized after Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in 2012. The report called for moderation, for outreach, for immigration reform. But one by one, the people working on the project went from abhorring Trump to embracing him.

 

There was “the Striver,” Elise Stefanik, the Harvard-educated representative from upstate New York who “was doing what was required to get the next buzz,” Miller writes. There was “the Little Mix,” Reince Priebus, who liked “feeling important” and tried “to stay in everyone’s good graces while the world around him unraveled.” Miller calls Trump’s former press secretary Sean Spicer “the Nerd-Revenging Team Player” who gamely thought that obtaining some status in the White House might make up for some “negative charisma.” There was a coterie of “Cartel-Cashing, Team-Playing, Tribalist Trolls,” always on the lookout for the next gravy train.

 

Some of these former colleagues will talk to Miller; others won’t. “Why We Did It” begins and ends with the story of his friendship with the Republican fund-raiser Caroline Wren, a fellow “socially liberal millennial,” who worked with Miller on McCain’s 2008 campaign but more recently made a star turn as a Trump adviser subpoenaed by the panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

 

Wren’s motivations don’t turn out to be particularly complex; she herself admits that her politics have always had less to do with the finer details of governing than the more cultish aspects of personality. “She had come to worship John McCain,” Miller writes, and she was soon “obsessed with Sarah Palin.” When pushed to explain what drew her to Trump, whose policies she says repulsed her, Wren rails against smug progressives driving around in their Priuses and forcing everyone to drink out of paper straws. She felt intensely annoyed by their self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. She liked Trump because of what she calls his “scorch-the-earth mode.”

 

This “animus,” Miller says, seems to have been the necessary condition for converting his “reluctant peers” into Trump supporters. I recommend reading “Why We Did It” alongside “It Was All a Lie” (2020), by Stuart Stevens, another “what happened” book by a former Republican operative. Stevens comes across as thoughtful, deliberative, reflective; Miller comes across as clever, a little bit mean, extremely profane. Stevens captures how the Republican Party spent decades cultivating grievances that it didn’t plan to do anything about, while Miller captures the consequent emotional valence, with its “unseriousness and cruelty.” Both books are absorbing; neither is particularly hopeful.

 

“AHHHHHHH,” an exasperated Miller writes, remembering how he stayed in politics because of his own thirst for fame and fortune. For all the reluctant Trump supporters’ torturous rationales, maybe the reasons for why they did it don’t get much more complicated than that.

[Winstonm]

It may be time to move this entire thread as well as the US to the RIP thread.

[Winstonm]

I always thought the movie “The Grudge” was a horror film. Little did I know it is a documentary of the Republican Party.

[pilowsky]

Now we know where the inspiration for the zombie genre comes from.

[thepossum]

Just came back to this wonderful thread after a few weeks.

I have no idea where to start but am happy to see that my concerns about the role of entertainment, media and popular culture are being widely discussed

 

I realise I could be part of the problem enjoying the more satirical/comic shoot-em up genres. You can't win

 

EDIT I must admit to being something of a Die Hard fan and find it one of the most rewatchable examples of its genre. As for Bruce Willis one of my favorite films of all time was the Hollywood remake of 12 Monkeys

 

EDIT 2 on a very serious note I feel it is hard to argue the case that the availability of <insert problem product here> is not linked with increased use/abuse

 

EDIT 3 (almost forgot - trying to cover everything in one post) its also a sad reflection n society and the state of the world that a 1970s/80s (?) Star Trek scene is what passes for philosophical discourse these days. That is the state of the world now

 

EDIT 4 As for the state of the world can you really not watch a Tarantino film during certain hours in England anymore?

 

EDIT 5 Hopefully the last one. While the above points may seem like trivialising the impact of culture/entertainment/games on people's behaviour I have become increasingly concerned (without having researched it) in the apparent increase in people being unable to separate fantasy from reality

 

EDIT Sorry this is the last and it ties everything together about the state of this world and what appears to be the problem. In fact all my points are linked. Dumbing down of a whole planet. More and more low quality product. Not every movie is a Tarantino and most people appear incapable of analysing such a movie or industry anymore anyway etc

 

EDIT N Maybe start questionning the world when the industries supposedly most concerned with our physical and mental well-being have also become dominated/obssessed by fake reality and technology. Imagine a world (its here) where your life can be ***ed up in VR too. Link the dumbing down, massive bloat in certain sectors it means that all of us are rats in mazes these days. Oh those ones didn't make it. Never mind on to the next etc. Don't forget all of us are small mammals on the same ship, despite how much resource is wasted trying to find another one. I nearly forgot, some of us have quite high level knowledge of research on (juvenile) psychopathy but don't feel qualified to comment. People being silenced using that kind of ad hominem is another way the world has plummetted especially when so many of those supposedly qualified cannot even put up a good argument about anything much. 1st year academe from memory (I think a 101, maybe a 2 but it should be primary or pre-school level) included not relying on or using argument from authority yet sadly it is used constantly. I realise that I have contradicted myself on how this world has been degraded (for whatever <political?> reason) but is not everything self-contradictory

[y66]

I think we need a Pat Cipollone moment.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/c9bc6ff2-bddb-470f-887c-215d1a7c4515?segmentId=b0d7e653-3467-12ab-c0f0-77e4424cdb4c

[kenberg]

Just came back to this wonderful thread after a few weeks.

I have no idea where to start but am happy to see that my concerns about the role of entertainment, media and popular culture are being widely discussed

 

I realise I could be part of the problem enjoying the more satirical/comic shoot-em up genres. You can't win

 

EDIT I must admit to being something of a Die Hard fan and find it one of the most rewatchable examples of its genre. As for Bruce Willis one of my favorite films of all time was the Hollywood remake of 12 Monkeys

 

EDIT 2 on a very serious note I feel it is hard to argue the case that the availability of <insert problem product here> is not linked with increased use/abuse

 

EDIT 3 (almost forgot - trying to cover everything in one post) its also a sad reflection n society and the state of the world that a 1970s/80s (?) Star Trek scene is what passes for philosophical discourse these days. That is the state of the world now

 

EDIT 4 As for the state of the world can you really not watch a Tarantino film during certain hours in England anymore?

 

EDIT 5 Hopefully the last one. While the above points may seem like trivialising the impact of culture/entertainment/games on people's behaviour I have become increasingly concerned (without having researched it) in the apparent increase in people being unable to separate fantasy from reality

 

EDIT Sorry this is the last and it ties everything together about the state of this world and what appears to be the problem. In fact all my points are linked. Dumbing down of a whole planet. More and more low quality product. Not every movie is a Tarantino and most people appear incapable of analysing such a movie or industry anymore anyway etc

 

EDIT N Maybe start questionning the world when the industries supposedly most concerned with our physical and mental well-being have also become dominated/obssessed by fake reality and technology. Imagine a world (its here) where your life can be ***ed up in VR too. Link the dumbing down, massive bloat in certain sectors it means that all of us are rats in mazes these days. Oh those ones didn't make it. Never mind on to the next etc. Don't forget all of us are small mammals on the same ship, despite how much resource is wasted trying to find another one. I nearly forgot, some of us have quite high level knowledge of research on (juvenile) psychopathy but don't feel qualified to comment. People being silenced using that kind of ad hominem is another way the world has plummetted especially when so many of those supposedly qualified cannot even put up a good argument about anything much. 1st year academe from memory (I think a 101, maybe a 2 but it should be primary or pre-school level) included not relying on or using argument from authority yet sadly it is used constantly. I realise that I have contradicted myself on how this world has been degraded (for whatever <political?> reason) but is not everything self-contradictory

 

This post, relating to the changing world, solves a problem for me.

This morning there was an obit in WaPo about Sonny Barger, the founder of Hell's Angels. I found it interesting in a historical way and considered posting it on RIP but I thought many people, including Barger, might object. You can find it here: https://www.washingt...ls-angels-dead/

So I have now posted it here.

 

He was 83, so am I. The obit says he founded Hell's Angels in 1957. I have sometimes tried to sort out the history, since we had a Hell's Outcasts motorcycle club in my high school. No, I wasn't a member but the head guy and I were in metal shop together. The initiation ceremony was rumored to be seriously risky. The obit also mentions that Barger saw The Wild One in 1953. I saw it also, but in 1955. I can pin that down because it was a double feature with Blackboard Jungle , a '55 film. I bought my ticket expecting to prefer Jungle but I much preferred The Wild One, especially the music. See

for example. I bought the soundtrack, it was on two 45s.

 

 

No, I am not advocating such a life. And Johnny (Marlon Brando) comes to that conclusion at the end of the movie. Of Course, he did, I am sure the Hollywood Code at the time would insist that he do so. The opening line is something like "It all started with the girl".

 

My life was much more sedate. But I do think that sometimes when "experts" discuss issues of adolescence they sound as if they themselves skipped over that period of their lives.

[y66]

In just two weeks, the court has acted to erase reproductive health freedom, flood our public places with more deadly weapons and, now, to let our planet burn.

 

It's a mess, aint it Sheriff?

 

If it aint it'll do till a mess gets here.

Not just the Supreme Court. Our entire system of government looks more like the crime scene in "No Country For Old Men" every day.

[y66]

Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening. Respectfully, I dissent.

[y66]

End of the day, the Court is just playing Lucy-and-the-football with Congress: you may *think* you've delegated this power by using broad language, but according to the rules we've just made up decades later, you haven't *really* delegated it.

 

There's also a profound disconnect between applying public-meaning textualism to interpret most statutes, but applying an insistence on evidence of specific legislative intent in delegation cases.

 

The words of a statute mean what a reasonable reader at the time it was passed would have understood them to mean.

 

Oh, okay, well, the Clean Air Act appears to delegate to EPA broad power to make rules that will keep the air clean!

 

You see, in cases where textualism would lead to the regulatory state having the power to undermine conservative policy goals, then we turn to our fallback methodology, which requires that Congress use a special magical incantation in the text. True ... this magical incantation was not known to Congress when it passed the Clean Air Act, but the fact that it didn't use it anyway is just evidence that its delegatory heart was insufficiently pure.

 

Let's be clear: the Court can talk all it like about the alleged democratic deficiency of administrative agencies (although: pot, kettle), but this is fundamentally a Congress-disempowering doctrine. It makes it nearly impossible for Congress to pass laws accomplishing its goals.

[Winstonm]

Anyone not following the Jan. 6 hearings on emptywheel.net is missing out.

 

We are at a tipping point, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure-and it ain’t looking good.

[barmar]

It’s hard to know how to respond to claims that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” That may well be accurate, but what if you start with the premise that there are no guns? Wouldn’t that provide an alternate method?

The argument the gun rights advocates make is that you can't make it that there are no guns, because the bad guys will just ignore the laws that are supposed to prevent them from getting guns. Meanwhile the good guys would obey the laws, which makes them cannon fodder for the bad guys. Therefore, we have to give guns to good guys so they can level the playing field.

 

But the argument is specious. Most gun violence is not perpetrated by criminals who plan ahead and would know how to get guns illegally. It's mostly spur of the moment -- accidents, crimes of passion, arguments, etc. This may not be true of some of the most notorious mass killings, but while they get the most press, they're a drop in the bucket compared to all the gun deaths that happen on a daily basis.

[barmar]

It got me wondering to what extent the president can say where he wants to go and to what extent the Secret Service can overrule him.

From https://civilservicehq.com/can-the-secret-service-override-the-president/

By law, the Secret Service can override the President. The President communicates with the Secret Service about what he would like to do or where he wants to go. It is then up to the Secret Service to determine if it is a risk to national security for the President to do so. If not, a protection plan is formulated and executed by Secret Service agents.

Presumably they have standard procedures for routine activities. So if POTUS frequently goes to McDonald's, they know how to handle this. OTOH, they may need to decide quickly about requests to go to an insurrection.