President Donald Trump said Thursday that the government will not livestream the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, reversing a plan Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week.
Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3. Trump said family members of his victims will be able to watch in person.
"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."
The plan drew pushback from Republicans and Democrats. Some critics warned it could feed Hasan's stated wish for martyrdom, while others said a public broadcast was contrary to American values.
After Trump's post, Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell told ABC News that Hegseth supports the president's decision and that the two are "completely aligned."
John Galligan, Hasan's longtime civilian attorney, told ABC News the reversal came "as no surprise" and called the original plan a "dumb decision".
The reversal closed a debate that had split even Trump's own camp. Hegseth had argued the public should see the consequences; Vance had questioned whether the broadcast would happen at all and said he would not watch it. Bipartisan critics warned of martyrdom and of American values — and in the end, the president sided with the doubters over his own defense secretary.
The deterrent argument was real — Trump said so himself, and he was right that the world should understand how America deals with terrorists. But so was the revulsion, from victims' families to lawmakers in both parties, at turning a military execution into a broadcast spectacle. In the end the president chose the wiser course: he listened to good people, overruled the spectacle, and kept the promise that matters. Justice will be done, on Dec. 3, by firing squad — with gravity, not cameras.
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