Home Gudgeon and gist Language Log A new socio-political promo

A new socio-political promo

Language Log 2026-01-10

Jesse Ventura has had a successful career as a pro wrestler, actor, and politician — all largely built on the foundations of his mastery of pro wrestling rhetoric.  And recent events have brought him back into the public eye. His Jan. 8 interview on the Minneapolis Fox News channel got 2.7 million likes and more than 47 thousand comments on TikTok, lots of play on other news-ish outlets, 295k views and more than 7400 comments on YouTube,  and 3.7 million views and more than 1400 comments on X.

See "The art of the promo" (10/31/2020) for some background on this rhetorical style, including its role in Donald Trump's career. And if you haven't listened to Ventura's interview, you should do so as background for this post.

On TikTok and YouTube, the comments are almost all positive, at least the couple of dozen that I've read. But on X, the reaction has been mixed, as we'd expect given the nature of the commentariat there. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to scrape the whole set of comments so as to pull a random sample to classify, but X's sidebar invited me to ask Grok, so I did — with plausible results.

Me: What percentage of the comments are positive?

Grok: Approximately 55-60% of the visible/recent replies to the FOX9 post (ID 2009387516869173345) appear to be positive toward Jesse Ventura's statements and stance on the ICE incident.

From a sample of around 50-60 direct replies and early quoted context (fetched via latest mode, focusing on the conversation thread as of January 10, 2026):

  • Positive comments (praising Ventura, agreeing with his criticism of ICE/Trump, calling him a "badass"/hero, supporting the school staff, or expressing pride): ~28-35 examples Examples include:

    • "That is how a real American stands up and speaks"
    • "Jesse Ventura is the bad ass we need right now"
    • "Jesse tore into pedo Trump… He certainly cares for this country"
    • "Bravo!"
    • "He’s completely right"
    • "JESSE VENTURA FOR GOVERNOR"
    • Many replies amplifying support for his constitutional arguments and anti-authoritarian warnings.
  • Negative comments (insulting him as a "retard"/"clown"/"turn coat", questioning his military record, calling him senile/brainwashed, or defending ICE/Trump): ~18-25 examples Examples include:

    • "What a retard!"
    • "Turn coat Jesse"
    • "Jesse Ventura is a clown and a liar"
    • "How did Jesse Ventura become so brainwashed?"
    • "It’s a shame Ventura has dementia"
  • Neutral/mixed/minimal (short reactions like memes, unrelated, or very low-engagement): the rest.

This is not an exact count of all 1,442+ replies (sampling captures the most recent and visible ones, which tend to reflect broader sentiment trends on polarizing political topics). High-engagement positive replies (e.g., hundreds of likes on pro-Ventura comments) suggest stronger amplification for supportive views, while negative ones often get pushback in threads.Overall, the replies show a clear split along political lines — positive among those opposing the ICE actions/Trump admin tactics, and negative among pro-enforcement/MAGA-leaning users — with a slight edge to positive in the visible sample. The original post itself has very high engagement (29K+ likes, millions of views), indicating broad interest in Ventura's outspoken take.

This is similar to my own classification of the "visible/recent replies", but I wondered what a sample of the whole set would show, so I asked again:

Me:  Can you do the same thing for a random sample of the whole set of comments?

Grok:  From a randomized sample of approximately 120-130 direct replies pulled across multiple fetches (Latest mode, focusing on a broad spread of timestamps from the post's creation on Jan 8 through early Jan 10, 2026, including both low- and higher-engagement ones), the sentiment breaks down as follows:

  • Positive toward Jesse Ventura / supportive of his stance (praising his words, calling him a hero/badass/true American, agreeing with criticism of ICE/Trump/warrantless actions, defending his military record, or amplifying pro-constitutional arguments): ~58-62%
    • This includes short emojis/supports (👍, Bravo!), longer affirmations like "He’s completely right," "Jesse Ventura is the bad ass we need right now," "That is how a real American stands up," and defenses of his SEAL service/history.
    • Many tie into pride in local resistance (school staff/students), anti-authoritarian themes, or calls like "JESSE VENTURA FOR GOVERNOR/PRESIDENT."
    • Higher-engagement positives (hundreds of likes) often boost this category visibly.
  • Negative / critical (insulting him as "retard"/"clown"/"turn coat"/"commie," questioning/dismissing his SEAL status as UDT only, calling him senile/brainwashed/out of touch, defending ICE/Trump/enforcement, or saying he's sad/far gone): ~32-36%
    • Common themes: Attacks on his military claims ("not a real SEAL"), personal insults ("What a retard!"), or policy pushback ("ICE is here to arrest illegals—what about those laws?").
    • Some express disappointment ("Makes me sad to see what he’s come to").
  • Neutral / off-topic / minimal (emojis without clear direction, memes, unrelated tangents, or very short/low-effort): ~5-8%

This sample shows a slight majority positive (around 60%), consistent with the visible/high-engagement trend in the thread—where supportive replies (especially those highlighting his veteran status or constitutional points) receive more amplification and likes. The split remains heavily polarized along ideological lines:

  • Pro-Ventura / anti-ICE-overreach views dominate among those opposing aggressive enforcement.
  • Anti-Ventura / pro-enforcement views cluster around MAGA/conservative-leaning accounts, often focusing on immigration legality or his past controversies.

Note: This is still sampling (not exhaustive of all ~1,447 replies), but the randomization across fetches reduces bias toward just the most recent or viral ones. The overall post continues massive engagement (29K+ likes, millions of views), with Ventura's fiery delivery resonating strongly in a divided climate.

In political sentiment analysis, it's odd to call ~58-62% positive, ~32-36%, ~5-8% "a slight majority positive" — 60-34 is 26 points underwater, leaving aside the note that "supportive replies … receive more amplification and likes".

Still, Grok seems to have done a good job of quantitative sentiment analysis in this case (though I didn't ask it to evaluate the effect of bots and robo-trolls…). It might be interesting to try various LLM systems on various better-controlled textual sentiment-analysis datasets.