I think he's just picking things he liked that were big in his heyday (70s/80s). Phantom was huge in NYC. Rocky/Rambo were big then. KISS must have made some sort of impression.

Culturally, he's frozen in amber.

The President ignoring legislative action by interfering with the agencies tasked with fulfilling them is always a bigger risk than Congress usurping the President.

Almost all federal agencies -- independent or not -- get their purpose, power, authority, and funding from Congressional law. The President is chief executive tasked with overseeing these agencies, but he is supposed to be bound to faithfully executing the law.

Could that be part of the reason why Article II doesn't let the President (sole executive authority) so much as appoint a dogcatcher without Senate approval?

While the Constitution does vest executive power in one person, it gives the Senate a considerable role in the appointment of executive officials. Congressional restrictions on firing or employment seem a lot more in line with the Constitution than "Presidential executive power is unlimited!"

I did enjoy most of them. Some are pretty good! But no Children of Men? Pan's Labyrinth? Eternal Sunshine? Get Out? Whiplash? Hereditary? Amélie? Spirited Away? 1917?

And Dunkirk over Oppenheimer? Or even Inception? Heck, I'd watch Interstellar before Dunkirk and that was a hot mess.

Also somewhat surprised how many of our other institutions (Press, universities, businesses, etc) will just shrug and go along with it. I shouldn't be surprised, but I would have thought at least out of self-interest they would have pushed back harder.

Very much surprised about how much of our government infrastructure the President can unilaterally destroy quickly and how few safeguards there are to prevent any of it -- especially with a pliant SCOTUS.

We're at the point that the world's richest hype man physically invaded government buildings to throw the levers of regulation to his advantage. We all discovered that the government did a bunch of regulatory things so important and boring we never heard of them until they were destroyed.

They should challenged him and halted the briefing immediately. But then again, they also should have stopped attending his briefings the minute the AP got banned for not using Gulf of America in its style guide.