The fact that Pete Hegseth agreed to an exclusive interview with a right-wing conspiracy theorist named Jack Posobiec was itself remarkable. But the beleaguered defense secretary’s comments during the interview with Real America’s Voice made matters vastly worse.
At one point, for example, Hegseth attacked Democrats’ patriotism and suggested party officials were “willing to” give away troops’ “positions on the battlefield.” In another part of the discussion, the former Fox News host insisted that the Defense Department had previously launched a recruitment drive with “advertisements” about “My Two Mommies.” (No such ads appear to exist.)
But it was a different exchange that proved even more notable. MS NOW reported:
The Pentagon said Thursday that it will livestream the firing squad execution of former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is scheduled to be put to death later this year for the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood.
The Pentagon made the announcement after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier Thursday that Hasan’s execution would be open to the public.
“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.
He was, by all appearances, quite serious.
Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others at the U.S. Army post at Fort Hood in 2009, in the deadliest mass shooting ever on an American military installation. He is now scheduled to face a firing squad on Dec. 3, at the same time of day he committed his murders.
And Hegseth apparently wants the public to watch.
There are countries where the government kills its own citizens in public displays. As The New York Times noted, such actions are most commonly carried out countries such as Iran, North Korea and Taliban-led Afghanistan. The same report added that releasing video of executions “is most often associated with extremist militant groups like the Islamic State.”
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As things stand, Hegseth wants the United States to join this ignominious club.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, “Calling for a livestream of the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is disturbing and makes a mockery of our legal system. There is a reason why we treat the meting out of justice with the seriousness it demands. We are a democratic country and should take the rule of law seriously, not turn it into a spectacle.”
It’s worth emphasizing the degree to which this represents an unsettling step backward for the U.S. The Washington Post reported on the last instances when the American public was invited to witness such an execution.
The hanging of Rainey Bethea in Kentucky in 1936 is widely considered the last high-profile public execution in the U.S, although there was a subsequent public execution in 1937 in Missouri.
Bethea, who was black, was publicly hanged for rape, after he confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old white woman, Lischia Edwards, although he was never charged with murder, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), which monitors capital punishment. The hanging was carried out in a parking lot in Owensboro, Kentucky, to avoid damaging the courthouse lawn due to the crowds that were expected, the DPIC said.
By all accounts, an estimated 20,000 people were on hand for the execution. The Post’s reported added, “There was also a public execution the following year, when Roscoe ‘Red’ Jackson was hanged in Missouri. About 500 townspeople watched the hanging, according to an AP report at the time. The DPIC identifies Jackson’s hanging as the last public execution in the U.S.”
There is no need add to this history or reset this clock, even if Hegseth seems eager to do so.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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