Christa Pike, a woman who’s been on death row since she was 20 years old after being convicted of killing her classmate more than 30 years ago, survived her own execution earlier this month, with the botched killing once again sparking a heated debate over the barbaric practice.
Now, the Trump administration is doubling down by inviting the country to celebrate the upcoming execution of a mass shooter by livestreaming the grisly event over the internet — a ruthless 21st century twist on a sadistic practice only a handful of countries around the world still allow.
It’s such an unfathomable idea that it’s quite literally turning the pages of satirical magazine The Onion into an uncomfortable reality.
While there’s little doubt about Nidal Hasan’s guilt — the former army psychiatrist killed 13 people at the Fort Hood US Army post in Texas 17 years ago — broadcasting an execution for the world to see is yet another new low for an already morally bankrupt administration.
“It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” defense secretary and former TV presenter Pete Hegseth said.
“It will be livestreamed,” a Pentagon official told Reuters. “Details will follow.”
Beyond being the first public execution to be livestreamed, it would also be the first execution by military firing squad in the United States since November 1945 and the first public execution since 1936, when a Black man named Rainey Bethea was hanged in Kentucky in front of 20,000 people.
What livestreaming Hasan’s slaying will accomplish is dubious. If anything, in a country that has a long history of glorifying violence and struggling with repeated mass shootings facilitated by lax gun control laws, the grim broadcast could even backfire. After all, violence begets violence, according to biblical scriptures Hegseth claims to be beholden to.
Netizens were horrified by the latest news. Some pointed out glaring discrepancies in Republicans’ messaging.
“‘If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it,’ says the crowd trying to ban drag shows and books,” journalist Laura Bassett wrote in a post on Bluesky.
“I can scarcely imagine a more un-Christian thing than live-streaming an execution for the public,” veteran and writer Charlotte Clymer argued.
Others pointed out how a return to public executions could regress the United States by a century.
“If you plan to watch a livestreamed public execution, chances are you would have attended a lynching 100 years ago,” retired physics professor Eddie Smith wrote. “This is no different. Shame on you — whoever you are.”
More on executions: The Brutality of Lethal Injection Is Unfathomable