--- title: "Hegseth Announced a Public Execution on a Podcast, and the Army Found Out From the Interview" description: "The Pentagon confirmed the Fort Hood shooter’s December 3 firing-squad death will be livestreamed; the details came after" author: "Nate Ledger" published: 2026-10-10T10:30:44.646Z modified: 2026-10-10T13:36:45Z url: https://rews.cc/a/hegseth-announced-a-public-execution-on-a-podcast-and-the-ar-1bdf02 language: en tags: ["military", "trump", "executions", "hasan", "firing-squad", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Hegseth Announced a Public Execution on a Podcast, and the Army Found Out From the Interview *The Pentagon confirmed the Fort Hood shooter’s December 3 firing-squad death will be livestreamed; the details came after* By Nate Ledger · October 10, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/hegseth-announced-a-public-execution-on-a-podcast-and-the-ar-1bdf02 ## In brief - Hegseth announced the public execution to podcaster Jack Posobiec aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, blindsiding Pentagon and Army officials - Hegseth, the acting Army secretary and the Pentagon spokesman decided “public” meant livestreamed; the Army has rules on witnesses - Nidal Hasan is set to die by firing squad at Fort Hood on Dec. 3; he killed 13 people there in 2009 - It would be the Army’s first execution of a soldier since World War II and the first military execution in 65 years - Republicans Thom Tillis, Austin Scott and John Curtis joined Democrats in urging Hegseth to abandon the livestream Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chose an unusual venue to announce that the execution of the Fort Hood mass shooter would be public: an interview with far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which Hegseth had visited Wednesday to welcome the crew home from a Middle East deployment. “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,” he said. [According to CNN’s Haley Britzky](https://cnn.com/2026/10/10/politics/pentagon-scramble-hegseth-public-execution), three sources familiar with the matter say the comment was the first many people across the Pentagon and the Army had heard of the idea — and they were caught off guard. There were immediate questions about what “public” could even mean. Army regulations govern who may witness a military execution: family of the prisoner and of the victims, media representatives, a chaplain. It was Hegseth, acting Army Secretary Adam Telle and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell and his staff, one source said, who decided that “public” meant livestreamed. The Pentagon then confirmed it in a statement notable for its brevity: “The Secretary is correct. It will be livestreamed. Details will follow.” The Army referred questions up the chain. The announcement — a firing-squad execution for Nidal Hasan, set for December 3 at 1 p.m. local time at Fort Hood, the Texas base where he killed 13 people in 2009 — drew bipartisan backlash and a cascade of unresolved logistics, [a second CNN report detailed](https://cnn.com/2026/10/09/politics/fort-hood-execution-hegseth-livestream). Vice President JD Vance said Friday, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” and that he wouldn’t watch if it did. President Donald Trump, who earlier this week approved Hegseth’s recommendation of a firing squad, welcomed the method — “We’re giving a man the death penalty who killed 14 soldiers a couple of years ago. Death penalty through firing squad — and he deserves it,” he said at a White House event honoring Christopher Columbus — but told CNN affiliate WSTM he was not involved in the livestream decision, adding, “but I understand the decision.” FCC chair Brendan Carr told CNBC it was his understanding the execution would not air on broadcast TV, deferring to Hegseth on the rest. What remains is the doing of it, and multiple sources told CNN officials have been scrambling since Wednesday. A specific unit has been selected to carry out the execution, with what one source described as great care over which soldiers will fire, given the potential psychological impact. A livestream multiplies the problems: shielding the shooters’ identities, deciding where the stream runs beyond the Pentagon’s own site when broadcasters and social platforms restrict violent content — and whether soldiers may decline to take part in what the military is treating as a lawful order. “This is a situation where the guy has done a very bad thing and hurt a lot of people, years removed,” the source said. “He’s going to be immobile and put up like a target.” One Army officer with multiple Middle East deployments was blunter: “It takes away everything America stands for when we do public executions.” The historical frame is thin, because this barely has precedents. [The firing squad itself was already a first](https://rews.cc/a/seventeen-years-after-fort-hood-the-army-is-told-to-ready-a--da3d51): the Army’s first execution of a soldier since World War II and the first death sentence carried out on any service member in 65 years. Only six firing-squad executions have occurred in the U.S. since 1977, per the Death Penalty Information Center, though three took place last year in South Carolina as states hunt for alternatives to botched and litigated lethal injections; five states now permit the method, and as of July 2026 it is Idaho’s primary one. The last American execution considered public was the 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea in Kentucky. Timothy McVeigh asked for his 2001 execution to be televised nationally; a federal court rejected an entertainment company’s bid to stream it, and Attorney General John Ashcroft settled for a closed-circuit feed to survivors and victims’ families, citing the case’s “unique circumstances.” Public executions today are associated with a short list of governments. Amnesty International counted six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran in 2025, and says North Korea uses them “to terrorize entire communities into compliance.” That list came up repeatedly in the criticism — and much of the loudest criticism came from Republicans. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America,” wrote outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Georgia Rep. Austin Scott, a death-penalty supporter, said “live-streaming executions is what jihadists do.” Utah Sen. John Curtis warned of cultivating “an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment” and urged Hegseth to reconsider. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy called the plan “disgusting” and “medieval”; Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called it a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” The national-security objection runs parallel. Joe Kent, a former senior intelligence official who resigned over the Iran war, warned the video would be “free propaganda” for terrorists to recruit with. CNN analyst Peter Bergen, who has covered Hasan for years, agrees: the gunman casts himself as a “religious warrior,” and “a public video of his execution would play into his narrative of who he is.” Cornell law professor Sheri Lynn Johnson noted that executions have long admitted reporters, counsel and family — but that broadcasting one risks “hardening the public to the idea that murder is wrong.” So the sequence, laid end to end: the idea announced on a podcast before the Army knew of it, the definition of “public” settled in a hallway between the secretary and his spokesman, the confirmation issued in sixteen words, and the plans — who shoots, who watches, who can refuse, who streams it — worked out afterward. “Details will follow,” the Pentagon said. They will have to. ## Sources - [Army caught off guard by Hegseth’s order to make firing squad execution public](https://cnn.com/2026/10/10/politics/pentagon-scramble-hegseth-public-execution) — cnn.com - [Hegseth wants America to watch a firing squad execution. It’s drawing backlash](https://cnn.com/2026/10/09/politics/fort-hood-execution-hegseth-livestream) — cnn.com