Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth drew swift condemnation because of his comments about how he plans to carry out a high-profile death sentence.
Hegseth said Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, will face a firing squad of soldiers, and that the public will be able to watch.
"He's gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be," Hegseth said during an interview with Jack Posobiec that aired on Real America's Voice. "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 also said the decision was a "no-brainer" and that it will take place at Fort Hood at the same time that Hasan perpetrated the shooting and be carried out with "soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad."
Critics were quick to object to Hegseth's vow to turn it into a public spectacle.
"I oppose the death penalty, but I didn't always feel that way. I understand the people who support it - because I once was one of them," wrote Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic. "But either way, the death penalty staged as a public spectacle is an abomination and stains us all."
The progressive political news network MeidasTouch put it more bluntly, writing, "This is grotesque," and in another post, pointed out that Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and Saudi Arabia are countries that use public executions. "The U.S. re-joins an exclusive club," MeidasTouch scoffed.
"Never in history has normalizing public executions been a good sign for a republic," warned disinformation expert and blogger Jim Stewartson. "We are in deep, deep trouble."
"Pete Hegseth just gleefully announced the first military execution by firing squad since 1945 and said it would be 'public,'" noted Mikey Smith, the U.S. politics editor for The Mirror. "The last public execution in the U.S. was in 1936. There hasn't been a documented public military execution since the Civil War."