Execution hour
Your Defense Department is about to invent a genre: execution hour.
Pete Hegseth told Real America’s Voice that Nidal Hasan — convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting — is “gonna get a firing squad of soldiers. As it should be.” Then the content pitch, per Axios: “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.”
Hasan is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on December 3 at Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas, Axios reports. The Pentagon says the execution will be livestreamed, according to AP as cited by Axios, without naming the host platform. The Defense Department declined to comment further on Hegseth’s remarks. The Army has not shared how it intends to conduct the execution. Axios notes it is unclear whether “public” means spectators, a stream, TV, or a select list.
When your deterrent needs a distribution plan, you are not doing justice. You are doing programming.
Hasan’s victims were soldiers. Their families do not owe the country a premiere. A lawful sentence can be carried out without a teaser trailer from the secretary of defense. If the point is seriousness, whisper less about audience and more about process.
The first time since forever
Axios puts the milestones in a clean stack:
- The United States has not held a public execution in 90 years. The last was 1936, when Rainey Bethea was hanged in Kentucky.
- This would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961.
- The last U.S. military execution by firing squad was in 1945, when Pvt. Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion in France, per NPR as cited by Axios.
- Only Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah authorize firing squads among the states, per the Death Penalty Information Center as cited by Axios. South Carolina carried out the first U.S. firing-squad execution in 15 years last year.
Oregon National Guard air-movement operations at Fort Cavazos (Fort Hood), Texas. Hasan’s firing-squad execution is scheduled there for December 3, 2026. Credit: Oregon National Guard, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Fort Hood is not a streaming studio. It is a post with a mass-casualty scar. Turning the sentence into a watch party is a choice.
Pete Hegseth, official portrait as secretary of defense, 2025. He said the public should be able to watch Hasan’s execution. Credit: U.S. Department of Defense, public domain.
Phil already pitched the show
Before you pretend this idea was born in a MAGA group chat, meet Phil Donahue.
In 1994, Donahue and condemned inmate David Lawson petitioned to videotape Lawson’s North Carolina execution for television. The U.S. Supreme Court denied them. Lawson was executed in the gas chamber on June 15, 1994, untaped, per the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. North Carolina courts had already held there was no constitutional right to record it.
Donahue was not selling toughness. He told Larry King he opposed capital punishment and wanted the public to see how barbaric it was, per Showbiz411. He later advocated televising Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s execution in 2001, Showbiz411 notes. The urge was the same: put death on camera and let the audience decide what they feel.
Phil Donahue receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House, May 2024. In 1994 he petitioned to videotape an execution for television. Credit: The Biden White House, public domain.
Hegseth wants you to watch so you fear consequences. Donahue wanted you to watch so you feel disgust. Different sermons. Same camera.
The red costume: deterrence as content
Axios still flags the open questions the sound bite skipped: where the stream lives, who gets a seat, whether “public” means a bleacher or a homepage. The Pentagon posts speeches on X and YouTube today. That is not the same as casting a firing squad. Hegseth answered the vibe question before the logistics question. That order is the tell.
If you came up on law and order, sit down.
Hasan murdered soldiers on a U.S. post. A lawful sentence after due process is not the scandal. The scandal is a Defense secretary auditioning the kill for an audience because “people need to understand.” Deterrence that requires a livestream is advertising. It is the same instinct we mocked when politics became cable-news cosplay in Made for Television.
Republicans who spent years calling Hollywood sick for packaging violence will now explain why a firing squad needs a homepage. They will say victims’ families deserve closure. Families can have closure without a public URL. If your theory of justice collapses without engagement metrics, you do not have a theory of justice.
The blue costume: progressive voyeurism with better lighting
Showbiz411 frames Hegseth as a “dangerous clown” and asks whether YouTube, Google, or Zoom should block a live execution. That is a real platform question. It is also the same progressive instinct that wanted the tape in 1994 for the opposite moral: force the public to watch so they will hate the practice. Either way, the corpse is the A-roll.
Democrats, wipe the smirk off.
Your side’s blue-chip talk-show liberal tried to make live executions a television event thirty years ago. Courts said no. The moral framing was anti-death-penalty. The product was still a corpse on tape. Today’s blue costume condemns Hegseth as a “grotesque” ratings goblin — Showbiz411’s word — while clinging to selective toughness whenever the defendant is the right kind of monster and the camera is aimed at the other tribe’s cruelty.
Progressives who binge true-crime podcasts, protest prison conditions, and then click every leaked execution protocol are not practicing philosophy. They are practicing content with a tote bag. And Democrats who oppose capital punishment in the abstract but go quiet when the condemned is a jihadist who shot soldiers should admit the polling math. Moral clarity that depends on the victim’s uniform is not moral clarity.
Both costumes
Fair is fair. Hasan’s crimes were real. A military death sentence, carried out under law, is not a meme. Victims’ families are not extras. Opacity can be its own cruelty.
But broadcasting state killing as civic education is older than Hegseth’s makeup chair. The red costume calls it deterrence. The blue costume once called it transparency against barbarism. Neither side is writing a treatise on punishment. Both are fighting over who gets the rights to the footage.
Capital punishment has always been half law and half ritual. The ritual used to be the town square. Then it moved behind prison walls because decent societies got queasy. Livestreaming is the town square with better bandwidth. Calling that progress is a category error.
Axios still cannot tell you whether “public” means a YouTube link, a bleacher, or a closed circuit with a press pool. That ambiguity is the tell. They built the hype reel before the production schedule.
You do not need a costume for this one. You need a country that can punish without turning the scaffold into a premiere. Call your senators and ask a boring question: will December 3 be justice, or opening night?
Receipts
- Axios, October 8, 2026. Hegseth Real America’s Voice quotes, Dec. 3 Fort Hood date, AP livestream note, DoD non-comment, Army details pending, 90-year public-execution gap, 1961 military-execution gap, 1945 Slovik firing squad, DPIC state list, 1936 Bethea hanging.
- Showbiz411, October 8, 2026. Donahue 1994 petition framing, Larry King anti-death-penalty quote, McVeigh advocacy note, Hegseth quote reprint.
- Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, June 28, 1994. SCOTUS denial of Donahue/Lawson taping petition; Lawson executed June 15, 1994, untaped; North Carolina courts’ no-right-to-record holding.
- Hypocrisy Democracy, Made for Television. Prior coverage of politics-as-broadcast.
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Originally published on Substack.