Pete Hegseth Sparks Outrage After Announcing Fort Hood Shooter's Firing Squad Execution Will Have Public Livestream

The administration of MAGA Republican President Donald Trump has been accused of being a reality TV presidency, and members of his cabinet are not helping him escape that unserious image.

First, former MTV Real World and Road Rules party boy-turned-Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spent months filming a reality show road trip with his family that no one watched. Now Fox News weekend host-turned-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to livestream a military execution.

Speaking to the right-wing TV outlet Real America's Voice on Thursday, Hegseth stated the Army execution of mass shooter Nidal Hasan will be done publicly. It will be the first execution done by the military since 1961.

Trump had announced on Monday that Hasan would be executed by firing squad. In a social media post on Tuesday, acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle shared the memo which scheduled the execution for 1 p.m. on December 3 at Fort Hood.

In 2009, Virginia-born Army Major Nidal Hasan, a Medical Corps psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people and injured 32 others at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas. During his 2013 court-martial where he defended himself, Hasan admitted to the shootings.

A jury panel of 13 Army officers convicted him of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. They unanimously recommended he be dismissed from the Army and sentenced to death.

When asked about it, Hegseth excitedly rattled off:

"No brainer. Execution by firing squad. Army major betrays his country, radical Islamist, kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course we're gonna do [the execution] at Fort Hood. Gonna do it on a Thursday, we're gonna do it at one o'clock which is when he did it, and it's gonna be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad."

"It hadn't been since World War II since we've done that."

The last firing squad execution by the military was in 1945 when Army private Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion.

You can see Hegseth's comments here in a post shared by the DOD rapid response account:

Hegseth enthusiastically continued:

"Well, I kinda like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win. Which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground. So it was radical Islamist terror attack."

Despite Hegseth's revisionist history, the Army specifically decided not to charge Hasan with terrorism, citing he was socially isolated, stressed and upset by his work counseling soldiers returning from warfare, and less than a month away from his own deployment to Afghanistan. The shooting was instead characterized as "workplace violence," which Hegseth attributed during his diatribe to Democratic President Barack Obama instead of the Pentagon's own investigation.

Hegseth later announced:

"And so he's going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be. And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public."

While executions always have an approved group of witnesses—mainly made up of members of law enforcement, the justice system, and friends or family members of the victims or the prisoner—the United States hasn't held a public execution in 90 years.

Hegseth justified the public execution, saying:

"...people need to understand that...there's serious consequences for these types of things."

The Pentagon later confirmed Hegseth's plans, saying only that the execution will be live-streamed without specifying how or on which platform. The DOD currently posts content on YouTube and X.

The backlash was swift.

@mikehoops67/X

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement:

"The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture. [Public executions] constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

The UN human rights office has made similar statements denouncing the public executions carried out by Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iran, whose governments give the same justification that Hegseth gave.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the Iranian government for their public executions.

However, the POTUS approved Hasan's in the United States.