President Donald Trump on Thursday scrapped Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, undercutting a promise Hegseth had made publicly and repeatedly just a week earlier.
“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that did not mention Hegseth. The president said streaming “might have been a strong deterrent,” but that “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die.” Trump added that the victims’ immediate families may view the execution in person.
Hegseth had personally championed the idea, telling Real America’s Voice last week that “we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” before Pentagon officials confirmed the livestream. Trump had already been privately backing away from the plan, as it drew bipartisan condemnation and an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found 8 in 10 Americans opposed it, including 64% of Republicans.
Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood in 2009, is still scheduled to be executed there on Dec. 3, Axios reported. It would be the U.S. military’s first execution since 1961 and its first by firing squad since World War II.