GOP lawmakers push back on Hegseth decision to livestream execution

Republican lawmakers are pushing back on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to livestream the execution of the convicted Fort Hood shooter, former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people in Texas in 2009.

Lawmakers in both chambers said the focus should be on justice for the victims and their families and the public showing of the firing squad is something oppressive dictatorships perform that is beneath America.

Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and has disagreed with Hegseth’s decision to fire former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, said Friday he supports the sentence of death but livestreaming executions is “what jihadists do. America is better than that.”

Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) said Friday that the execution, which is set to take place Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. local time at Fort Hood, shouldn’t be a livestreamed “spectacle,” arguing the focus should be on “justice for the victims and their families, not turning an execution into entertainment.”

“Their pain deserves respect, not a public show,” Bresnahan said in a post on social media .

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, opened fire at the Fort Hood processing center in November 2009, killing 12 soldiers and one civilian. He injured 32 others in what was the deadliest mass shooting ever on a U.S. military installation.

Hasan, an American-born Muslim, was heard screaming “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.” The attack ended when Hasan was shot four times and detained by civilian security officers. He is now paralyzed from the waist down.

Hasan said during his opening statement at the 2013 trial, where he was his own attorney, that the “evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.” He said he carried out the mass shooting in response to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said Seneca “warned that Rome’s bloody spectacles corrupted the people who watched them.”

“A civilization erodes when it cultivates an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment,” Curtis wrote Friday , adding the planned livestream “risks feeding that appetite.”

“The victims deserve justice administered with solemnity,” he said. “Broadcasting a death diminishes us and is not an effective deterrent. I urge him to reconsider.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who said voting to confirm Hegseth was the “biggest regret” of his political career, said Hasan should face the death penalty, but streaming the execution is “beyond disgusting.”

“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do,” Tillis said late Thursday . “It should not be happening in America.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who did not vote to confirm Hegseth, said there is no need to livestream any execution, arguing she expects such a decision from “terrorists and dictators, but not here in America.”

“It would give this individual, who deserves no further notoriety, the martyrdom he seeks,” Murkowski said Friday in a post . “How we carry out justice matters just as much as the justice itself, so I urge the Pentagon to reverse this gruesome decision.”

Hegseth’s office declined to comment on the lawmakers’ remarks.

But some Republicans welcomed Hegseth’s decision, which he shared during a Thursday interview with right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) lauded the Defense secretary’s decision as “excellent.”

“Public execution is what this terrorist deserves,” Ogles wrote Friday . “We will be watching.”

Hegseth has said he wanted the “harshest lawful punishment” for Hasan, saying in September that he asked President Trump for final approval for the execution, which will be the first military execution in more than 60 years.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said during Thursday’s interview with Posobiec.

Hasan was found guilty on all 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder by a military jury, which sentenced him to death . The Supreme Court denied his final petition in April last year.

Vice President Vance was skeptical that the livestream would take place, but he said if it does, he will not be watching.

“This is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11,” the vice president told reporters in Lima, Ohio. “The people that he was meant to treat, the Army soldiers he was meant to treat for mental illness and other problems, he took them at their most vulnerable and gunned down these people where they lived.”

“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” Vance said. “Now that said, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it.”

When asked Friday about livestreaming Hasan’s execution, Trump said “we’ll be making a determination on that.”

But minutes later, when he was asked if he approved the livestream, the president said, “Did I approve? Absolutely.”

It was not clear whether Trump meant that he had approved the execution or the livestreaming.

Unsurprisingly, defense-focused Democrats in both chambers of Congress slammed Hegseth’s decision, arguing once again that he is not fit for the role.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Friday that livestreaming an execution is a “barbaric spectacle” and is another “stunt” by Hegseth to “distract from his tenure’s repeated failings which have only weakened our national security and standing in the world.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), another Armed Services panel member who has tussled with Hegseth in the past , called for the Defense secretary’s removal, saying the Trump administration should be “delivering for the American people,” not “glorifying violence.”

“There is no doubt that Nidal Hasan is a murderer who took the lives of 13 people and injured dozens. He should face justice for that. But a public execution? Here in the United States?” Kelly, a former Navy pilot, said on Friday .

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a House Armed Services Committee member and former Army paratrooper, said Hasan’s “actions were horrific,” but livestreaming his execution is “not an answer.”

“A public execution only gives our adversaries fodder for anti-American propaganda that makes us less safe,” Crow, a vocal Hegseth critic, said in a statement Friday. “Pete Hegseth’s self-absorbed hunger for power, attention, and violence is disgusting and beneath the office he holds. He is not fit to lead.”

Army retired three-star Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who was the commander of Fort Hood and approved Hasan’s death sentence, panned the livestream as a “terrible idea,” writing the U.S. “surrenders” a piece of moral high ground in the U.S. military’s campaigns against al Qaeda and ISIS.

“Once it is aired, it is bound to make it harder for our service members to be seen as ‘the good guys’ in foreign lands. How many insurgents were inspired to attack our troops by photos from Abu Ghraib prison? Worst of all, it will make Nidal Hassan an international martyr,” MacFarland said in a Thursday post on LinkedIn .