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WASHINGTON — The execution will not be televised.
President Trump announced Thursday he was scrapping plans to livestream the Dec. 3 execution of Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Hasan by firing squad, concluding that “good people” don’t want to view the killing.
Trump caveated that survivors and family members of the victims of Hasan’s Nov. 5, 2009, rampage will be able to watch him die if they choose.
“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,” the president posted on Truth Social.
“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” he added.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth revealed plans last week to showcase Hasan’s death, drawing bipartisan outrage.
“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,” a giddy Hegseth told conservative influencer Jack Posobiec. “I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was ‘win.’”
“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,” Hegseth added.
The US hasn’t staged a public execution since the 1930s.
Hasan, who has been paralyzed from the chest down since being shot by first responders on the day of the shooting. He was sentenced to death in 2013 by a military jury comprised of 13 officers.
After Hegseth’s initial announcement, Trump told reporters Oct. 9 that he “absolutely” authorized it, but later clarified that he “will make a decision ultimately” about whether to broadcast the punishment.
Several top Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), made clear that they would not watch a livestream if it was offered.
“The concern would be that you would create a video that then would be a recruiting tool for future terrorists,” Johnson told CBS News earlier this week. “We’ve got to think through the policy implications of all that. I wouldn’t be watching it if it was aired, but there’s a lot of opinions on that.”
Elsewhere in his post, Trump made sure to blame former President Barack Obama for the Fort Hood shooting.
“Barack Hussein Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intercepted electronic communications between Hasan and the radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki,” he noted in his Truth Social post. “When reviewed by his FBI terrorism task force, investigators concluded that Hasan’s emails were not a threat.”
“This assessment of the Obama Administration’s actions was later considered to be a key intelligence failure.”
