‘Beyond Disgusting’: The Right Wing Is At Odds Over Hegseth’s Public Execution Plan

Some elected Republicans are bristling at a shocking claim from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the Trump administration plans to livestream the firing squad execution of the infamous Fort Hood shooter, with one lawmaker calling the plan “beyond disgusting.”

But the reaction from influential figures on the right has been wildly different, with some celebrating public executions as “healthy” expression and framing anyone opposing the Pentagon plan as a hypocritical leftist or a terrorist sympathizer.

Hegseth on Thursday excitedly shared his plan to publicly execute former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, whose death by firing squad President Donald Trump approved this week after he killed 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the defense secretary told right-wing commentator and political operative Jack Posobiec the Pentagon would “make sure that people are able to watch” Hasan’s execution by firing squad.

“[P]eople need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said.

Posobiec, promoting his interview with the Pentagon chief, has vigorously defended the plan to publicly execute Hasan. In a flurry of social media posts Thursday and Friday, the right-winger and Real America’s Voice television host argued livestreaming the execution was not “bloodlust” but rather a “display of justice” that was “biblical and moral.”

And Posobiec painted opposition to Hasan’s public killing as primarily liberal outrage.

“The Left only cares about Hasan [because] he is a terrorist,” he wrote in one post. “None of these people would have a problem with a public execution if it was a White guy,” he followed up.

But critics of the Pentagon’s plan to livestream a state execution were not confined to the left.

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

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson argued the execution would be easy fodder for anti-American sentiment abroad. “One thing is for sure, in the Middle East, they’ll be passing out .mp4 files of the Nidal Hassan [sic] execution to celebrate his martyrdom and recruit new terrorists,” he wrote in a post on X.

Tillis and Erickson were joined in opposition Friday by Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who said he supported the death sentence for Hasan but that “live-streaming executions is what jihadists do.”

“America is better than that,” Scott added.

And GOP Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), who’s become increasingly willing to break with the Trump administration, invoked Roman philosopher Seneca, who he said in a social media post warned that the “bloody spectacles” of the ancient empire “corrupted” those who watched them.

“A civilization erodes when it cultivates an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment,” wrote Curtis. “Secretary Hegseth’s plan to livestream the Fort Hood execution risks feeding that appetite.”

The Utah Republican continued that while he thought the victims of Hasan’s crimes deserved justice, Hegseth’s plan to broadcast his execution was not an “effective deterrent” for future acts of terror. “I urge him to reconsider,” Curtis said.

The reservations of establishment Republicans, though, were far from the majority view — GOP lawmakers remained largely silent on the matter. And their skepticism was less than convincing for MAGA influencers and right-wing thought leaders.

“The hysterical crashout you are seeing over this from many supposed ‘conservatives’ shows you who is not prepared to do what it takes to save Western civilization,” retorted Posobiec.

Charles Cornish-Dale, a British far-right commentator who goes by the online handle “Raw Egg Nationalist,” pointed to a post from Erickson made during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in which the radio host suggested law enforcement shoot rioters.

“This dude who was calling to shoot ordinary Americans who had the courage to protest a stolen election suddenly has a fit of conscience when the person being shot is an actual enemy of America who killed 13 American soldiers,” wrote Cornish-Dale.

Right-wingers have also defended plans to publicly execute Hasan by claiming the U.S. has a long history of such events. Posobiec and others pointed out that George Washington oversaw public executions. And New Hampshire Libertarian Party chairman Jeremy Kauffman cited the 1936 killing of Rainey Bethea, the last person publicly executed in the U.S.

Kauffman quoted a Time Magazine article from the time which described “tipsy merrymakers” and “hanging parties” in Owensboro, Kentucky, the night before Bethea’s public hanging.

“It is healthy to celebrate the elimination of evil,” the libertarian political leader wrote.

Democrats were broadly aghast at the Pentagon’s plan to kill Hasan in public and on camera. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a veteran, said public executions were “the kind of thing Iran and the Taliban do” and called on Hegseth to be removed from office “immediately.”

“Public executions have no place in a democracy,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We as a nation cannot stoop to the level of the people we seek to punish.”

Hegseth, meanwhile, said Thursday the execution would take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3 at one o’clock in the afternoon — the time Hasan began his shooting. A Pentagon official confirmed to HuffPost the execution “will be livestreamed” but declined to say where or how. “Details will follow,” the official said.

It’s unclear whether Hasan’s execution would be allowed on any major social media platform or streaming service, most of which bar violent or graphic content. Representatives for Meta, Google and X did not return requests for comment on whether their services would carry the execution.

A spokesperson for TikTok, where the White House posts to more than 7 million followers, did not directly address the issue but pointed HuffPost to its policy that bans “depictions of real-world graphic incidents and violence, such as torture, the moment of someone’s death or the shooting of an individual.”

Even with Hegseth’s confident bluster, though, it appears even some in the Trump administration are uncomfortable with streaming a public execution.

Vice President JD Vance on Friday poured cold water on the whole plan, adding that even if the Pentagon followed through on its proposal to kill Hasan on camera, he wouldn’t be tuning in.

“I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” Vance told reporters. “If it’s all through live stream, I’m not going to be watching it.”