A new poll has made clear how the American public really feels about Pete Hegseth.
The embattled defense secretary is almost universally disliked, CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten said Thursday after a Quinnipiac University survey delivered a damning assessment of Hegseth.
“We start off the title slide asking ‘Who hates Hegseth?’ and basically everyone, if you’re the American public,” Enten said on CNN News Central.
The poll found that only 32 percent of voters were happy with Hegseth’s job as defense secretary, while 57 percent disapproved and 11 percent had no opinion, leaving his net approval a staggering 25 points underwater. Quinnipiac University said those numbers marked Hegseth’s lowest approval rating showing in its polls.
Enten pointed out that Hegseth was nine points underwater in January, before the Trump administration waged war against Iran.
“You think that’s low? Look at this: he’s more than twice as unpopular, nearly three times as unpopular now,” he said.
Hegseth fared even worse among independent voters, who gave him a net approval rating of minus 43.
The poll also found that only 39 percent of voters felt some confidence in Hegseth’s leadership of the military, while 56 percent were either not so confident or not confident at all.
The data guru said the findings left “no wonder” why House Republicans, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, chose to clock out until the November elections and stave off an impeachment vote against Hegseth.
“No wonder, no wonder, no wonder Speaker Johnson did not want his Republican representatives to actually have to vote on this because if they voted with the president, they’d be voting against the American public because the bottom line is Pete Hegseth is hated by basically everyone,” he said.
The House headed home Wednesday night, allowing members to avoid voting on a Hegseth impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie. The Kentucky Republican, who has long been a thorn in the Trump administration’s side, took aim at Hegseth over the war in Iran, which was not authorized by Congress, and other abuses of power.
When reached for comment, the Pentagon responded with an attack on CNN and the Daily Beast.
“CNN is Fake News, and the Daily Beast is low IQ slop for the left,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez said.
Valdez, 27, spent a year at college and left without graduating. He has never worked outside Republican politics. He became deputy press secretary to Hegseth—where he demanded journalists be “punished” for reporting true stories—after working for extreme MAGA reps Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert.
The poll deals a fresh blow to Hegseth, whose difficult personal and professional history overshadowed his his uphill battle for Senate confirmation.
The former Fox News star faced allegations of sexually assaulting a woman in California in 2017. Hegseth told police at the time that the incident was consensual—meaning that his defense was that he was cheating on his then-mistress, who had just given birth to their child, when he had sex. He was not charged, but admitted last year that he paid $50,000 to the accuser. He married the mistress, Jennifer Rauchet, his Fox News producer in 2019. In the aftermath of his second marriage, his mother accused him in an email of being “an abuser of women.”
Hegseth also vowed in 2024 to stop drinking if confirmed as defense secretary, after lawmakers raised concern about drinking, that former colleagues said affected his job performance.
However his time running the Pentagon, which he has tried to rebrand as the “department of war,” has also been rocky, with the Daily Beast’s Michael Daly revealing that the former National Guard officer is known behind his back as “no tab Pete” in a reference to his lack of the uniform tabs which demonstrate elite skills, such as being a Ranger.
Hegseth’s use of social media has also been controversial. Republican Rep. Don Bacon slammed Hegseth over an X post that appeared to shame a young woman for her weight in an attempt to clap back at Canadians.
“It’s lowbrow,” Bacon said. “I think it’s unprofessional, and I’d like to think that our leadership, representing us in the Pentagon and in the White House, we should be better than that, and I thought it was demeaning and uncalled for.”
