Bipartisan blowback on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plans to livestream a military execution, plus a scandal involving Kimberly Guilfoyle, the US Ambassador to Greece.
Transcript
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There has been pointed and bipartisan objection to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream a military execution. The Pentagon announced this week that Nidal Hasan will face a firing squad in December. He is the former Fort Hood Army psychiatrist who fatally shot 13 people and wounded nearly three dozen others in 2009. NPR senior contributor Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Secretary Hegseth told Real America’s Voice that, quote, “it’s public because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things.” But many in his own Republican Party disagree, aren’t they?
ELVING: They say it’s a bad idea – beyond disgusting, in the words of Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican senator, whose vote enabled Hegseth’s confirmation last year. They’re saying it’s medieval, even barbaric, comparing it to public executions by ISIS and other terrorists or radical regimes such as the Taliban and Afghanistan.
But let’s be clear – the issue now after all these years is not crime and punishment. The 2009 crime is beyond dispute, and even those with the deepest doubts about the death penalty itself see its rationale and its application in this case. The dispute now is over making a spectacle of it. No U.S. serviceman has been put to death since 1961, back before the Vietnam escalation. And no American has been executed publicly since 1936 – nine decades ago.
Hegseth says the livestream will send a signal that there are consequences, but does anyone think someone who did what Nidal Hasan did thought his actions wouldn’t have consequences? This is tantamount to saying global terrorists need to be reminded that suicide bombing has downside risks. Trump was asked about this spectacle, said he gave it the green light, absolutely. But Vice President JD Vance said yesterday there were weeks ago before the December 3 date, and things could change.
SIMON: Also this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, asked a Trump donor to send her $100,000 to cover credit card debt just before her confirmation hearings last year, and to do it secretly. Is the ambassador’s goose cooked?
ELVING: Well, the water’s certainly hot enough. It depends on the call of the chef as to whether it’s become too hot. The president said it was too bad but said little else. And the unseemly request for 100,000 and the access to the Trumps that was at issue will add further to the narrative of corruption surrounding the Oval Office and the first family in general in this second term.
Guilfoyle first came in contact with the Trump operation as a news personality on television. She was considered a catch because 20 years ago, she had been married to California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. And she later became engaged to Donald Trump Jr. during his father’s first term and was seen with him at the party’s 2024 convention, but that relationship ended later that year. Trump Jr. has subsequently married someone else.
The main issue of this midterm election, Scott, as we know, is affordability. The issue of government corruption and abuse of public trust, though, is rising fast. And if voters come to link what they don’t like in the economy with what they don’t like to hear about administration figures selling access, that would add more jet fuel to the anti-incumbent flames.
SIMON: Some serious debates this week in battleground states for the midterms – Maine, Michigan, Georgia and Iowa. What stood out to you?
ELVING: The common theme was the struggle Republican nominees were in with Trump’s tariffs and Trump’s war with Iran. They were hamstrung by their need to show independence from those policies, even as they maintained support for the president and the party. At this point, it’s clear that Republicans are hoping the Democrats have peaked and the numbers will balance out again. But Republicans are also fearful that the Democrats have not yet peaked and the next round of polls will find them pulling away toward big gains in the House and perhaps a new majority in the Senate.
SIMON: NPR’s Ron Elving. Thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
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