Ossoff: Hegseth ‘deeply unwell’

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) on Friday called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “a deeply unwell person” over his plan to livestream a firing squad execution next month.

“I think Pete Hegseth is, frankly … a deeply unwell person who seems to relish this kind of brutality,” Ossoff said on MS NOW.

The Pentagon a day prior revealed a surprise plan to livestream the Dec. 3 firing squad execution of the convicted Fort Hood, Texas, shooter, former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, in what would be the military’s first execution in six decades. The plan immediately drew fierce blowback from both sides of the aisle, who have called the idea barbaric and below the country’s dignity and standards.

“Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), wrote on the social platform X . “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

Joe Kent, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March over the Iran war, said streaming Hasan’s execution is “a stain on our morality” and “also gives the terrorists free propaganda that they will use to radicalize & recruit more terrorists like” Hasan.

Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said in a statement that Hegseth’s plan is “a gift to anti-American terrorist recruiters” and is “absolutely shameful and damaging to America’s interests and core values.”

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, opened fire at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13 people. He is set to be put to death on Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. local time at the same military base, according to Hegseth.

The last American service member to be killed by firing squad was Pvt. Edward Donald Slovik, who was convicted of deserting his unit twice in combat in France. He was executed in the country on Jan. 31, 1945.

“I kind of like the mentality we had in WWII, which was win, understand that when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground,” Hegseth said Thursday.

Since then, the U.S. military has carried out only one other execution, with the 1961 hanging of Pvt. John Bennett for rape and attempted murder. The U.S. military has never in modern history made an execution public, and the last public execution of anyone in the U.S. was nearly a century ago in 1936.

Ossoff accused Hegseth of “spending his time with this kind of obscene medieval spectacle” rather than focusing on running the Pentagon, which he said is “falling into chaos.”

“The folks who are in positions of power in this administration, and of course we know all these things, but their values are in disarray, they’re totally disconnected from the daily experience of the American people, and their foreign policy is endangering the United States, squandering our international power and destroying our image in the world,” he said.