Donald Trump dropped the plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, a move that changes the public face of a case tied to Trump midterms debate. Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, will still be executed by firing squad.
Trump said on Thursday that the execution would not be streamed and wrote that “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.” He also said the immediate families of the victims may be able to view it in person if they choose.
Fort Hood and the livestream plan
The decision follows a plan that had been presented as public. Pete Hegseth said last week that Hasan’s execution would be a public event, and Hasan’s sentence would be the first military execution in more than 60 years. The public-broadcast plan would have been the first in United States history.
Hasan, left paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by law enforcement officers during the Fort Hood shooting, now uses a wheelchair. That detail made the execution plan unusually visible before Trump pulled back the livestream component.
Pentagon response and criticism
A Pentagon spokesperson said Trump and Pete Hegseth spoke about the decision not to livestream Hasan’s execution before Trump’s statement. Hegseth then backed Trump’s decision after previously arguing that the execution should be public, saying “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
The reversal came after criticism from several directions. The United Nations’ office of the high commissioner for human rights warned on Friday of last week that broadcasting the killing would “breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” and the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said “in no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”
Trump’s 35 Percent Problem in Trump Midterms also sits behind the political pressure surrounding the episode, while Yassamin Ansari, Lisa Murkowski and Rob Bresnahan each criticized the livestream idea in separate posts. Trump’s move leaves the execution in place and narrows the question to how, and for whom, it will be carried out.
