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I think it's a relatively open question still how much one president can do. I think at this point few people doubt the CIA's role in JFK getting offed. I'm not so convinced that the CIA/FBI fucked Nixon over, but there's certainly a lot of fuckery around Watergate which can't be ignored. And neither of those presidents were any actual threat to US intelligence agenices ie "deep state." Maybe JFK was going to be an annoyance to them. Maybe they didn't like Nixon feeling too big for his britches and having too much agency. But Nixon and Kennedy were both ardent anti- communists, no question. Kennedy didn't give a shit about overthrowing Castro, of course he was ok with that it it came to be, he just didn't want his pretty face all over it...

So anyway, point is, just two times, and I'm sure there are plenty more (Putin actually referred to being told yes and then the answer changing to no later after apparent discussion with CIA, etc. just the other day in the Tucker thing), that we can kinda analyze with some fog removed from the events, it seems like presidents have agency to do what they want until internal actors decide they don't. Those CIA dudes with 30 year careers aren't going to exactly like Bernie getting rid of Gitmo and moving towards normalizing Cuban relations. For all of their little petty fucked up reasons that is absolutely unacceptable.

I tend to avoid conspiracy theories, but sometimes in history there are just conspiracies, not theories, and I do honestly think the president holds limited power ultimately. You either go along to get along or hey who knows when some rogue ex-Soviet defector might pop your head.

I think Bernie would've been a real test of that though because he did genuinely have positions he developed over the years. If he did absolutely nothing about Gitmo and all the other things that would probably be some sort of evidence. If he got Dallasd after doing something... I guess we'd definitely know going forward 👀