Even Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson disapproves of the Trump administration’s planned live execution of Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan.
Johnson made his position known during a CBS News interview over the weekend.
“The concern would be that it would create a video that would be a recruiting tool for future terrorists,” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t be watching it if it was aired … [but] that’s outside of my lane of course. But I need to tell the White House what some of my colleagues think about that, and not everybody’s in favor of the idea.”
Hasan, a 56-year-old former Army psychiatrist from Virginia, killed 13 soldiers and wounded 32 others when he attacked the Texas military post in 2009. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the Pentagon’s plans to livestream Hasan’s execution by military firing squad.
“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 at the time.
Multiple Republicans expressed their distaste for the decision.
“Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” Senator Thom Tillis said Thursday. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”
“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that,” Representative Adam Scott chimed in the next day.
Hasan’s execution date is set for December 3. It is unclear what platform, if any, will agree to livestream it.