The Body Politic

Throughout history various societies have held the belief that the health of the nation was a reflection of the health of the ruler. According to Roman historian Livy, it was consul Menenius Agrippa who first invoked the “Fable of the Belly” to describe the body politic, in response to a secession by the Roman plebians in 494 BCE. In the fable the limbs denounce the belly for lazing about, ingesting all the food, and agree to stop carrying nourishment to it. One by one the limbs began to fail, until they eventually agree that all the body parts need each other to survive. Menenius compared the patricians to the belly and the plebians to the limbs, initially emphasizing that plebians should defer to patricians.

In 63 BCE Roman politician and soldier Catiline was rumored to have held a meeting in his home at which he promised to cancel debt, among other extreme actions, if he became consul. In a speech from the floor of the Roman senate, rather than defend himself against the allegations he presented an unusual description of the Roman “body politic.” As chronicled by Roman orator and scholar Cicero, Catiline made indirect reference to the Fable of the Belly, describing the republic as having two bodies: one feeble with a weak head, and the other strong without a head. In her book The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought, Indiana University’s Julia Mebane describes Catiline’s revelation of his tyrannical aspirations as having been “shocking” to the Roman audience.

Rejecting Catiline’s image of a divided body politic, Cicero offered instead a metaphor of an organism with a potentially fatal illness. He pictured Catiline and his conspirators as contagion requiring purging and amputation. “It was a central tenet of ancient philosophy that vices were diseases of the soul and could be represented in terms borrowed from medicine,” Mebane writes. Cicero elaborated the metaphor to analogize lex (law) and mens (mind). In his speech now known as Pro Cluentio given as a legal argument on behalf of a man accused of poisoning his stepfather, he compares magistrates, judges and citizens, and their relationship to the law, with nerves, blood, and limbs, and their relationshp to reason.

By the time of the Augustan era (27 BCE to 14 CE) the Fable of the Belly was understood to represent the interdependence of elements of Roman society, although in Mebane’s words it “validated an institutional hierarchy predicated on senatorial authority and popular acquiescence.”

A much older tradition from China combines Chinese alchemy and traditional medicine in the study of longevity. Consistent with the Chinese holistic approach to medicine, practitioners also considered how these techniques could be brought to bear on politics. As recounted by Chinese political historian and analyst Dr. H.C. Hei Sing Tso these scholars, whom he calls the “health-wise men,” created a principle known as “studying the ruler’s sickness as an extension to the state.” He cites as an example the case of Duke Ping of Jing, who ruled the Jing state from 557 – 532 BCE. Analyzing the Duke’s two bouts of illness during his reign using the principles of the “health-wise men,” officials identified the cause as a blockage of the Qi or vital force, “caused by the Duke’s own misconduct.”

The three causes of his sickness were:

• Not acting in harmony or rhythm with nature – for instance, ignoring that traditionally certain activities were performed during the day and others at night, or in summer rather than winter.
• Using political pressure to force another clan to “surrender beautiful women “for marriage.” “This,” writes Hei Sing Tso, “severely damaged the Duke’s authority, and provoked widespread anger.”
• A mismatch between the Duke’s “virtues” and “possessions.” Hei Sing Tso explains that Chinese ethics demand a balance between a person’s virtue and their possessions. Accumulating possessions in the absence of sufficient virtue “harms both health and leadership."

In this schema the ruler’s actions, health, and the state are seen as a triangular set of balanced relationships. And that participates in a four-part structure that includes the universe, the state, the ruler’s body, and his actions.

A November 25, 2025 New York Times article titled “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office” documents Trump’s increasingly limited public schedule, smaller number of public appearances, and reduced domestic travel. Trump has also been shown nodding off at official events, such as the Oval Office gathering on November 6 when he seemed to fall asleep only to stand at attention when a guest who may have been a GLP-1 patient collapsed. Trump appeared to be sleeping from time to time during the long cabinet meeting on December 2, having been previously observed apparently sleeping on other occasions including during his Manhattan criminal trial in 2024, and in a May meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.

On November 30 Trump told reporters that he had an MRI during his physical in October, but claimed he didn’t know what part of the body was examined. Trump’s physician eventually released a statement saying that the scan had been a preventive screen of Trump’s heart and abdomen.

Trump also boasted this week that he has undergone more tests for cognitive decline than any other president in history. The American Academy of Neurology recommends cognitive assessments annually. It was not immediately clear if Trump actually believed that having been prescribed cognitive assessment tests in April and October was an indicator of his prowess, or he was merely attempting to spin the news to his benefit. (Trump previously took the test during his first term, in 2018, in what observers have described as “an attempt to head off concerns about his mental fitness.”)

After months of speculation about the discoloration and bandage on Trump’s right hand, in June the White House released a memorandum from his physician stating that Trump had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI), described as “benign” and “common,” especially in people older than 70. Specialists noted that hand bruising was unlikely to be related to CVI, although could be a side effect of aspirin therapy, which in July Trump’s doctors admitted he was undergoing. Perhaps coincidentally an August FDA memorandum recommended use of MRI scans to monitor early Alzheimer’s disease treatment with Leqembi (lecanemab-irmb), which is administered intravenously or via injection.

In late November a video of Trump limping as he walked in the White House with his grandson renewed concerns that he suffers from frontotemporal dementia. Psychologist John Gartner suggested previously that Trump’s gait is a characteristic “leg swing” that is diagnostic of this specific type of cognitive impairment.

In the first year of Trump’s first term, he traveled to more than a dozen events between September and November. Events included speaking to energy workers in North Dakota, boosting the Senate candidacy of Luther Strange (appointed to fill the seat vacated when Jeff Sessions became Trump’s first Attorney General), etc. This year in the comparable period Trump has ventured beyond the DC metro area, his NJ golf club, and his FL home only five times. Four of those trips were to NYC (three to sporting events with wealthy friends). The fifth was to MAGA icon Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona. Trump did travel more internationally this fall than during the same timeframe in his first term, but leading MAGA voices like Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer criticized the trips, calling for greater focus on domestic issues. According to The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire some Trump allies fear his  “… lack of travel across the United States … has knocked his political antenna askew.”

Since the 2024 election, as of this writing Trump has only held between one and five in-person rallies, depending on who’s counting. For Republican candidates in the closely watched 2025 races in Virginia and New Jersey Trump attended only two virtual rallies. (Both candidates lost.)

The most recent rally Trump attended in person was at a casino in Mount Pocono, PA. Trump was expected to address economic concerns in the face of slowing job growth, rising unemployment, and high consumer prices. Reuters characterized Trump’s remarks as “short on details on cutting costs,” and reported that he “frequently veered off-subject into other areas such as transgender rights, Somali migrants in Minnesota, wind turbines and deadly electric fencing on the North Korean border.”

A recent Ipsos poll found Trump’s average job approval rating to be 42%, approaching what the pollster referred to as a “tipping point” at 40% -- the point at which the president is said to “lose traction.” In practical terms this correlates historically with midterm losses, a tougher path to electing a successor from the same party, legislative gridlock, and an empowered opposition party. Support from respondents identifying as Republican has remained fairly constant, dropping only a single percentage point since the first quarter of 2025. Support among independents with no declared party leaning has not changed significantly either, dropping 2 percentage points since the first quarter. On the other hand, support among independents identifying as “leaning Republican” has declined a whopping 18% over the same period. Demographically, approximately 15% of non-white Trump voters and those in the 18-39 age group now say they regret voting for Trump. In terms of issues, Trump has lost about 7% of his support among Republicans regarding his management of “cost of living;” support among Republican-leaning independents declined almost 20% over the same period.

Similarly, a recent AP-NORC poll found support for Trump’s handling of the economy has fallen nearly 10% since March of this year, now sitting at 31% approval, which is the lowest AP-NORC has recorded for Trump on the issue in either presidential term. And in what the AP calls “[p]erhaps most worryingly” for Trump, public approval of his handling of immigration issues and crime has dropped by comparable amounts.

In a parallel development, Republicans in Congress and elsewhere are pushing back against Trump and his administration. Four Republicans resisted Trump’s initial opposition to the Justice Department releasing all its files related to Jeffrey Epstein, leading Trump to reverse his position. Senate Republicans talked down Trump’s proposal to send $2,000 checks to all Americans, which he referred to as “tariff dividends.” Senators argued that the plan would require Congressional authorization, and that the money would be better used to pay down the federal deficit.

Twelve Republicans joined Democrats in the Indiana state House to vote against a redistricting plan Trump had advocated. And in what the IndyStar called a “monumental rebuke” to Trump, on December 11 the Indiana state Senate rejected the plan in a 19-31 vote.

Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Joni Ernst (R-IA), and Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) publicly expressed concern about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s actions, with Paul calling for Hegseth to testify regarding U.S. military missile strikes against boats in the Caribbean suspected of carrying drugs. 

Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who cast the deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr. Secretary of Health and Human Services, only to be joined in September by several other Republicans in objecting to Kennedy’s management of the department, continued his criticism of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine actions.

In the House of Representatives, as of December 4 22 Republicans have announced that they will not run for re-election in their current seats. Meanwhile Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) has had to confront revolts from multiple factions of his conference. On December 10 Republican moderates tried to force a vote on expiring tax credits for participants in Affordable Care Act health plans. Johnson declined to bring the proposal to a vote in the House, telling reporters that it did not have the support of the Republican majority. On December 11 a bipartisan majority in the House  passed a bill that reversed Trump’s executive order denying collective bargaining rights to Federal employees. The vote marked the first time the House has tried to overturn a Trump executive order in his second term.

Johnson has also come under criticism recently from women members of the House. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who announced earlier this month that she would resign from Congress, asserted in a recent CNN interview that Republican women in the House “are not taken seriously, and our legislation is not taken seriously.” Greene allied herself with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who penned a New York Times op-ed accusing Johnson of marginalizing women members of his own party. Greene also mentioned Rep. Anna Paulinha Luna (R-FL) who had to use a discharge petition to get a vote on her bill prohibiting members of Congress from owning stock, and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) who engaged in a war of words with Johnson over including an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would require the FBI to notify Congress if it began an investigation of candidates running for federal office.

MAGA itself – at least as represented by its media establishment – appears to be fracturing, as well. As online news outlet Axios has documented, there is a sense in which MAGA is what Axios calls a “media ecosystem” of influencers, podcasters, and “content creators,” who dominate Republican media “much as Fox News and the National Review did at their apex.” In a November survey of the state of MAGA media, Axios highlighted the conflict between Trump’s focus on Israel and Venezuela while working class voters were suffering the fallout of his economic and healthcare policy decisions. The article highlighted what then was an early stage of the conflict between Marjorie Taylor Greene –  who Axios characterizes as an America Firster –  with Trump as de-facto standard bearer of MAGA. Taylor Greene’s focus at that time was what she regarded as Trump’s overemphasis on foreign policy, and especially Israel. Her view paralleled that of the Tucker Carlson/Steve Bannon faction of MAGA media. Bannon quipped to Axios that members of Trump’s base “feel [he’s spending] too much time on Palestine and not enough on East Palestine, Ohio.” (East Palestine, OH was the site of a 2023 train derailment that released toxic chemicals.) In a November New York Times interview, Carlson echoed Bannon’s complaint about prioritization of Israel, saying “Israel does not matter.” Carlson’s video interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes in late October prompted conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, to call out Carlson and Fuentes as antisemitic. Sanitizing the issues somewhat, The Times' Robert Draper wrote that “[w]hat struck many about Mr. Carlson’s interview was what was not discussed.” 

Mr. Carlson did not explore Mr. Fuentes’s skepticism about the Holocaust or his admiration for Adolf Hitler. He did not bring up Mr. Fuentes’s racist disparagement of Black people and the vice president’s Indian American wife.

When Mr. Fuentes volunteered during the interview that he was “a fan” of Joseph Stalin, Mr. Carlson suggested that they “circle back” to the subject but never did so. Nor did he respond when Mr. Fuentes expressed concern over “organized Jewry in America.”

Carlson attempted or pretended to frame his interaction with Fuentes as free speech. “The most dispiriting fact of the last nine months is that huge proportions of the institutional Republican Party all kind of hate free speech every bit as much as the left does,” he told Draper. “They are every bit as censorious as some blue-haired, menopausal Black Lives Matter activist. And I just didn’t know that. And I’m disgusted. I feel betrayed. I take it personally.”

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz was among the conservative voices criticizing Carlson’s accommodation of Fuentes. In a SiriusXM interview with Stephen A. Smith, Cruz declared “If you are a bigot, if you are a Klansman, if you are a Nazi – you’ve got no business in the Republican party.”

Media personality Laura Loomer, who gained notoriety during the 2024 presidential campaign from traveling with Trump on multiple occasions, this week joined the chorus of Carlson critics, assailing his announcement that he planned to build a home in Qatar. Loomer noted that Qatar funds the Muslim Brotherhood and allows “HAMAS officials to live in Doha, where Tucker now wants to buy a place to live.”

Some in MAGA circles object to the extended Trump clan’s commodification of the MAGA brand. In a mid-November X (formerly Twitter) post, MAGA personality Mike Cernovich decried what he called “how overt the corruption was.” Others complain about the access that tech executives and Wall Streeters have to Trump and his administration. The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam wrote recently that Trump needed to return to “his own populist roots” embedded in his trademark “many people are saying,” rather than courting captains of industry.

More recently, right-wing political commentator Candace Owens has riled MAGA by alleging that Turning Point USA (TPUSA) played some role in the assassination of its founder, Charlie Kirk. TPUSA denied the allegations and challenged Owens to a streamed debate, which she declined.

The accumulation of these events and trends prompted New York Times chief political correspondent Carl Hulse to pen an article titled “Congressional Republicans Begin to Look Beyond Trump.” Hulse cites Trump’s “capitulation” to Congress regarding the release of the Epstein files as the “first signs of lame duck status” emerging. Other signs Hulce notes include Congress’s refusal to get rid of the filibuster during the rumble over the shutdown. Hulse quotes Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who noted during the debate about releasing the Epstein files “The record of this vote will last longer than Donald Trump’s presidency.” Hulse suggests that Trump’s “weakened status,” combined with Republican losses in the 2025 elections have highlighted tensions between a House and Senate that at one time were “unified in speedily doing whatever Mr. Trump demanded.” Congressional Republicans are splitting with Trump on topics as diverse as the military strikes against boats supposedly smuggling drugs, supporting sanctions against Russia that the Trump administration previously resisted, and have pushed back against Trump’s violent rhetoric concerning his political opponents.

For the time being, VP JD Vance appears content to toe the Trumpian line, although there were reports he met with media mogul Rupert Murdoch at the Murdoch family ranch near Dillon, Montana, hours before the Wall Street Journal published the story that included the birthday card Trump allegedly wrote for financier and convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The Irish Star recently reported that Donald Trump, Jr. is now polling only 10 points behind Vance, up from a 20 point deficit in August. The Star story followed by about two weeks a Daily Mail report that the Bush clan may be gearing up to re-take the Republican party once Trump is out of office.

In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, veteran political analyst and academic Thomas Edsall posed two questions that will affect Vance’s relationship to what Edsall calls the “MAGA establishment”:

First, can a MAGA movement that coalesced around Trump — based on a shared hatred of the left — continue without Trump?

Second, can Trumpism be institutionalized in a way that makes it a sustained, if not permanent, political force dominating the Republican Party and the right more broadly?

Edsall notes that in 2019 Vance joined with right-wing mega donors to create the “Rockbridge Network,” which described itself as a “political venture capitalist firm.” Edsall writes that it is not clear if Rockbridge has accomplished anything, but he describes it as having the potential to become “an alternative to the Republican establishment.” Edsall quotes University of Pennsylvania’s Damon Linker, who highlights the fractured condition of the MAGA Republican party – people whose core values are religious, and those who are completely secular; technocrats and those skeptical of (particularly) medical advances and the public health establishment; states rights advocates who want to dismantle the federal government, and others who want to wield the state as a tool of the right wing, etc. In Linker’s view, the force uniting these diverse factions was “fear and anger” at components of the left that were embodied in academia, media, elements of the corporate sector – and the legal battle to charge Trump with crimes. While Linker does not see Vance as possessing Trump’s charisma, he does note that Vance has taken care to cultivate relationships with most of the diverse groups in the MAGA coalition.

Edsall describes what he sees as Vance’s nascent strategy to win the 2028 nomination as “the antithesis of Trump’s approach in 2015 and 2016.” Characterizing Trump’s strategy as “the people vs. the powers-that-be,” Edsall compares Vance’s approach to that of George W. Bush: winning over special interest groups first – “governors and senators, members of the Republican National Committee, major donors and Christian evangelical leaders.”  The danger, says Edsall, is that, like George W. Bush, if Vance wins the nomination he’ll have to both defend his allegiance to right-wing MAGA groups with positions well to the right of the general electorate, and simultaneously distance himself from some of his supporters’ extreme positions.

For instance, it seems unlikely that Vance can gather broad appeal promoting some of Curtis Yarvin’s more extreme ideas, such as locating all political power in a mysterious figure known as “the Receiver,” who will transform the power of government into some variety of militarized corporation; or Peter Thiel’s assertion that he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Several of the political scientists Edsall consulted for his piece were skeptical that Vance could craft a practical and effective political campaign from notions as extreme of those of Yarvin, Thiel, and that ilk. Others asserted that the “MAGA establishment” to which Vance appears to be trying to appeal does not exist. The University of Texas’ Don Kettl told Edsall “[T]he next generation of kingmakers will be the ones with deep pockets, not deep ideas.” Barnard’s Shari Berman suggested that the post-Trump Republican party will be split between a Christian nationalist faction, perhaps with Vance as their champion (and Tucker Carlson as grand vizier), and a “more mildly nationalist, economically populist[,]” marginally more moderate faction, “perhaps with Marco Rubio as the leading figure.”

“There is considerable skepticism …,” Edsall writes, “about the viability of a MAGA establishment once Trump leaves the White House.”