I do not understand the mindset that goes into thinking that somehow a person is 1. Not required for a meeting and so can only attend on occasion and 2. If present must drive the entire thing.
I guess in theory they might think they are improving things if they assume it is an unguided, unfocused disaster with out them, but in my experience it is the exact opposite: a focused, relevant, quick stand up without vs a meandering, drawn out, ritualized boilerplate, "explain to the PM stuff everyone else knows" meeting with.
PMs can be genuinely useful too. They just need to use the most important words in their toolkit: "you 2 (3,4) discuss offline/afterwards, next person". Not to be used if people are casually chatting, but to fix that problem of 2 people having a conversation while 6 others listen for no reason.