House Speaker Mike Johnson said some of his Republican colleagues fear that livestreaming the execution of Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan could serve as a “recruiting tool for future terrorists,” the latest sign of GOP unease with the Pentagon’s plan.
In an interview with CBS News’ Robert Costa that aired Sunday, Johnson was told that Vice President JD Vance won’t watch the broadcast and that President Donald Trump has backed it. He said he hadn’t yet discussed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan with Trump, Vance or Hegseth.
Johnson said some colleagues are concerned the video could become a recruiting tool for terrorists, and that lawmakers “got to think through the policy implications of all that.”
“I wouldn’t be watching it if it was aired,” the speaker said, calling the issue “outside of my lane, of course,” but adding that he needs to “tell the White House what some of my colleagues think about that.” He also said “not everybody is in favor of the idea,” according to Mediaite.
Trump said Friday that he approved of the livestream but has since said the decision is his to make. “I’ll make a decision ultimately. I know what the military would like to do, but we’ll make a decision,” he told reporters Saturday. Axios has reported that he privately voiced doubts to confidants.
Vance has kept his distance.
“If it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” he said Friday, adding that he doubted it would happen.
Hegseth announced the plan last week in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” he said, and Pentagon officials later said the execution would be livestreamed.
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, and received a death sentence in 2013. His Dec. 3 execution would be the military’s first since 1961 and its first by firing squad since 1945.
Johnson’s concern echoes one raised by Joe Kent, who resigned this year as Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center director.
“Streaming his execution is not just a stain on our morality — it also gives the terrorists free propaganda that they will use to radicalize & recruit more terrorists,” Kent said, according to Reuters.
Other Republicans have joined Democrats in objecting, with Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) writing, “I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do.” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) called the plan “beyond disgusting,” writing: “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do.”
Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) invoked ancient Rome.
“Seneca warned that Rome’s bloody spectacles corrupted the people who watched them,” he wrote. “Broadcasting a death diminishes us and is not an effective deterrent.”
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