The Roll Up: December 2, 2025 

TL;DR: Always a controversial figure in the Trump Administration, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had an even more active week than usual attracting attention on social media. Posts followed their normal partisan patterns when Hegseth went after Sen. Mark Kelly and other Democrats for their video telling U.S. military members they must disobey illegal orders. But the tables turned after Hegseth reportedly ordered survivors of a U.S. attack killed by SEAL Team 6. Here's what we know:

Hegseth at a 2025 Pentagon press briefing

The week started out on a relatively positive note for Hegseth, as right-wing social media users rallied around his aggressive stance on Kelly and the other Democrats. Rolli IQ analysis shows opinions evenly split between positive and negative for the first part of last week. His 37 percent negative sentiments for the early part of the week fall far short of his average negative as Secretary of Defense of 63 percent. Interestingly, his positive sentiments early last week of 38 percent track just above his term average of 32 percent. This seems mostly due to unbiased reporting on the conflict between Hegseth and the Democrats showing up as neutral in the Rolli IQ analysis. 

Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for "Hegseth" Nov. 24-27, 2025

But moving to the end of the week, there's a drastic change in the nature of social media posts. Once word of the strike on Caribbean survivors hit the news and GOP members of Congress called for an inquiry into war crimes, social media users on the left saw it as a chance to pile on Hegseth, pushing positive posts down by more than a third and rendering the neutral posts to just 10 percent.  Rolli IQ saw negative posts nearly double to 68 percent and end higher than his term average of 63 percent.

Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for "Hegseth" Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 2025

The difference between early and late last week is visually clear in a Rolli IQ Sentiment Map. The first map below shows the early part of the week with the strong support (green lines leading to the "thumbs up" icon) Hegseth was seeing for his stand against the Democrats. Grouped by country to show the U.S. sentiment front and center, we see the negative sentiment (red lines leading to the "thumbs down" icon) are slightly heavier, but still on par with the positives.

Rolli IQ Sentiment Map for "Hegseth" Nov. 24-27, 2025

But looking at the latter part of the week shows that tremendous increase in negative posts, pushing down the number of positive posts and dominating the Rolli IQ Sentiment Map.

Rolli IQ AI Sentiment Map for "Hegseth" Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 2025

Looking specifically at posts on Twitter/X, which we would expect to be more favorable to Hegseth because of the preponderance of conservative users there, Rolli IQ's AI summary shows that support Twitter/X users had for the secretary's attacks on Mark Kelly, as well as continued support for military intervention in Washington, DC and other cities. 

This Twitter/X post is typical of many posted early last week, using Mark Kelly as a punching bag to praise Hegseth for his aggressive words on the matter. 

But moving to the end of the week, even right-leaning Twitter/X was a place where many posts critical of Hegseth could be found--nearly all driven by military actions in the Caribbean. 

Liberal commentators on Twitter/X dug in to lambast Hegseth over his actions leading to members of his own party calling for investigation into the Caribbean attacks. 

The bottom line is that the analysis using Rolli IQ to look at online posts about Pete Hegseth's performance as Secretary of War reveals that while social media users on the left used the controversial attacks on boats in the Caribbean to double down on their criticism of Hegseth, those on the right seem to be sitting out posting on Hegseth's actions against the boats, skewing posts even on right-leaning Twitter/X heavily against Hegseth.