Tucker Responds to Trump’s Plan to Livestream an Execution and His Anti-Christian Death Cult

Tucker Carlson (0:00)

If you've ever been around politicians or government bureaucrats who are about to deliver a statement or hold a press conference or give a speech, there's a sense in the room from the politician or bureaucrat that, like, this is really important, the world is watching.

But when you're not in that world, you realize, like, nobody's watching. Nobody has any idea what the Secretary of the Interior said yesterday, what he's working on, even what his name is. People don't even know what the president says or sends out on his true social or social media or whatever. It's like most of the stuff just kind of goes out into the ether, and only Politico reporters read it.

But if there's one statement from an administration official that you might have caught because it was a little bit jarring, it was the announcement the other day from the secretary, well now of war, formerly of defense, Pete Hegseth, that the man responsible for the massacre of military personnel some years ago, Nidal Hassan, is finally going to be executed. He's been under the death penalty for quite some time, and the process is reaching the end of its course. And then not only is he going to be executed, the execution is going to be live streamed. You're going to get to watch his killing. Boy, they don't say that kind of thing very often, but Pete Hegseth did say it. Here's exactly what he said.

Glenn Beck (1:10)

Watch.

SPEAKER_3 (1:11)

Major Hassan, this news that came down regarding firing squad, can you tell us about how that came about, and what led to that decision process?

Pete Hegseth (1:19)

No brainer.

Execution by firing squad. Army major betrays his country, radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course, we're going to do it at Fort Hood. We're going to do it on a Thursday. We're going to do it at 1 o'clock, which is when he did it. And it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. It hadn't been since World War II, since we've done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was when.

We know what it is. 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 that there's serious consequence for these types of things.

Tucker Carlson (1:59)

So in general, it's not worth parsing these statements literally, because they're not meant to be taken that way. Though it is kind of hard not to pause on the phrase, we win, and ask the obvious question, which is how does executing this guy who's been in prison for more than a decade constitute a win? Win what? Against whom? He's a federal prison inmate who's going to die, okay. You could argue, I guess, the morality of that, but it's hard to see that his death will lead us any closer to a victory over what. But none of this stuff is ever defined. You're not really supposed to think about what it means. But consider for a moment the idea that the US government will publicly execute a prisoner. So there are two levels on which to assess this, the effect on the prisoner and the effect on the rest of us. Now, for the first, it's pretty easy to make the case that this is a bad person. He is, after all, a mass murderer, an admitted mass murderer who murdered 13 people and shot 30 some others at a military base. He was a military officer, so as Pete Hegsteth correctly said, this was not simply a murder, it was a betrayal of the country whose uniform he wore. So there's something especially ugly about this crime. He wasn't fighting combatants, he was fighting people just standing in a room who were unarmed. So it's awful what he did. And it's hard not to argue that the guy doesn't deserve to die for that. Well, of course he does. Of course, he took 13 lives and wrecked many others. So on that level, okay.

But that's not really the question. There are a couple other questions that aren't getting enough attention. Maybe the most deepest question is, okay, he's guilty and needs to be punished. But as you assess that, ask yourself, am I guilty of anything that I haven't been punished for? Have I gotten away with anything? Not mass murder, of course. But like there is a deep sense on which there aren't a lot of truly innocent people in the world. All of us get away with stuff, if we're being honest with ourselves, including the person you just heard say this, and the person he works for as well. And so, while you always want justice to be done, and wrongdoers to be brought to account, and certainly you want the rest of us to be protected from murderers, you never want self-righteousness to creep into your assessment of other people, because in the end, you may not be a mass murderer, but are you anyone to judge other people? No, you should always extend grace to everyone, because again, just to restate, all of us, and if we're honest with ourselves, we know this is true, are getting away with things, just a fact, and so it doesn't mean you shouldn't punish murderers. Of course, you should. It just means dial back the self-righteousness a little bit, because who are you? Who am I? Who are any of us to stand up and pretend we're God? Well, of course, we're not in a position to do that, and we should never forget that. But the second question, which hasn't gotten enough attention, is okay, I think he's a bad guy, killed all these people, we're going to execute him, okay.