Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 in a November 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, is pictured in an undated Bell County Sheriff’s Office photograph.
Bell County Sheriff’s Office | Reuters
President Donald Trump said Thursday that the planned execution by firing squad of convicted Fort Hood mass killer Nidal Hasan would not be livestreamed, canceling the Pentagon‘s plans to do so.
Trump’s announcement came after growing backlash against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth‘s effort to show the former U.S. Army major’s execution live online, with concern that the footage would become a recruiting tool for terrorists.
Hasan, who is paralyzed from the waist down, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 3 by an Army firing squad at 1 p.m. Central Time in Fort Hood, which is located in Killeen, Texas.
Hasan, who during his 2013 court-martial said he was motivated to defend the “leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban,” could seek to delay the execution with a new legal challenge.
“Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major turned traitor, is a very bad and evil man,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. The president noted that Hasan had killed 13 people — one of whom was pregnant — and injured 32 others in the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting spree.
“With all of that being said, 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.
“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”
“That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose,” Trump wrote. “They deserve to witness JUSTICE!”
Hours before Trump’s announcement, a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll was released and showed that 80% of Americans said the execution should not be streamed live, versus just 18% who supported the idea.
About 53% of Americans support Hasan’s execution, according to the poll of 2,545 U.S. adults, which had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.
Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell, in a statement to CNBC after Trump’s announcement, said, “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth spoke about the decision to not livestream Hasan’s execution ahead of the Truth Social announcement.”
“The Secretary supports the President’s decision, and they are completely aligned,” Parnell said.
On Monday, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Catholic Archdiocese for Military Services, said in a statement that any Catholics assigned to the firing squad should “request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church.”
The Pentagon on Oct. 5 said that Trump had approved a recommendation by Hegseth to have Hasan, 56, executed by an Army firing squad.
Presidential approval is required for executions of military executions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Hasan would be the first member of the U.S. military executed by firing squad since World War II. The execution also would be the first carried out by the U.S. military since 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for the rape and attempted murder of a girl in Austria.
Hegseth on Oct. 8 said the execution would be at Fort Hood and, “He’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be.”
“And 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 said.
The Pentagon later said it would be livestreamed.
Before Trump’s announcement Thursday that the livestream would not happen, it was unclear which major video-streaming platforms, if any, would have aired the execution.
The Verge reported last week that YouTube, Twitch, Meta and X did not respond when asked if they would allow the execution on their sites, while TikTok pointed to the company’s policies barring “shocking and graphic content.”
Vice President JD Vance raised doubts last week about whether the livestream is “actually going to happen,” saying he would not watch it if it did.
“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is the guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” Vance said. “Now, that said, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., last week said in a post on X that the idea of livestreaming the execution was “beyond disgusting.”
“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do,” Tillis tweeted. “It should not be happening in America.”
Former Army Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, whom Hasan shot seven times during the attack, said he opposed the execution being livestreamed even as he said he planned to attend it in person.
“I want to be in the room where I can see him, and he can see me,” Lunsford said last week, according to CBS News. “People have to be held accountable for their sins, but I don’t want this to be some pay-per-view event, like some John Wick movie.”
“As a country, we’re better than that.”
Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemned the plan to show the execution publicly.
“Our God is the God of life. In no way can [Hasan’s] actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered. The word of God exhorts us: ‘do not repay anyone evil for evil,'” Coakley said, quoting St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
“The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people,” Coakley said.
CNBC has reached out to the Pentagon for comment on Trump’s post.
Nader Hasan, a cousin of Nidal who had spoken out after the Fort Hood shooting, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Notre Dame Law School Professor Richard Garnett said, “The president’s decision to abandon the livestreaming plan will, among other things, head off legal challenges that would likely have delayed the scheduled execution.”
“As a wide range of officials and citizens have noted, a livestreamed execution would have more likely resulted in brutalization of viewers and coarsening of culture than in deterrence,” Garnett said.