President Donald Trump said Thursday that the government will not broadcast the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. The decision reverses a plan Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced only a week earlier, which had drawn criticism from both parties.
“I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”
Trump said immediate family members of the people Hasan killed will be allowed to attend in person if they choose.
An execution set for December
Hasan, who opened fire at the Texas Army post in November 2009, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30, is scheduled to be executed at 1 p.m. on December 3 at Fort Hood, CBS News reported. He would be the first U.S. service member put to death by the military since 1961, when the Army hanged Pvt. John Bennett. It would also be the military’s first execution by firing squad since 1945, when Pvt. Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion during World War II.
Hegseth revealed the livestream plan last week in an interview with conservative activist Jack Posobiec. “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,” he said, as quoted by CBS News.
Surprise inside the administration
Hegseth’s announcement caught Trump, several senior White House officials and Army leaders off guard, NBC News reported, citing a White House official and a U.S. official. Trump initially liked the idea but changed his mind after learning more about the case, including that Hasan is paralyzed, the officials said. CNN reported that Trump had remarked privately that he did not at first know Hasan was paralyzed from the waist down.
NBC also reported that Army officials had spent months preparing for an execution by lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. When Hegseth began discussing a firing squad, planners shifted to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and were surprised again when Fort Hood was chosen.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Trump and Hegseth discussed the decision before the president posted it. “The Secretary supports the President’s decision, and they are completely aligned,” Parnell said.
Pushback from both parties
The livestream proposal ran into resistance almost immediately. Some critics said broadcasting the execution would feed Hasan’s stated wish for martyrdom, while others called it contrary to American values. Vice President JD Vance said a day after Hegseth’s remarks, “I don’t know that’s going to happen,” and added that he would not watch if it did.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told CBS News that “the concern would be that you would create a video that would be a recruiting tool for future terrorists.” He said he would not have watched a broadcast and that “not everybody is in favor of the idea” among Republicans in Congress.
Public opinion also leaned heavily against it. An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Thursday found that 80% of U.S. adults, including 64% of Republicans, said the execution should not be streamed live, CNN reported.
Had the plan gone forward, the United States would have joined a very small group of countries carrying out public executions. Amnesty International found that only Afghanistan and Iran conducted known public executions last year, according to CBS News. The last public execution in the United States appears to have been the 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea, which drew an estimated 20,000 spectators, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
