Hegseth announced last week that the US public would be able to see the execution of Nidal Hasan, which is set for 3 December at Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan, a former army major and psychiatrist, killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood in 2009. A military court sentenced him to death in August 2013.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” Hegseth said. “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.”

The de facto leader of Hegseth’s theocratic Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), Douglas Wilson, welcomed the announcement.