President Donald Trump said the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood mass shooter will not be broadcast live. Trump has been pushing hard to expand capital punishment ahead of the midterm elections, but appeared to draw a line after the plan to televise an execution sparked an ethical backlash.
"He will be executed by firing squad as scheduled," Trump wrote on Truth Social on the 15th, adding that the execution itself would not be shown live. According to the post, immediate family members of the shooting victims will be allowed to witness the execution in person.
Trump said he believed broadcasting the execution for all to see could serve as a powerful deterrent by showing the world how the United States deals with terrorists and what he called human scum like Hasan, the Fort Hood gunman. "But many good people of good will would not want to watch him die on a live broadcast," he said.
Earlier, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had said the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people in a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood military base in 2009, would be broadcast live. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist and a Palestinian American, was found to have carried out the attack under stress over his pending deployment to Afghanistan.
Trump approved Hasan's execution by firing squad earlier this month at Hegseth's recommendation. It would be the first firing squad execution in the U.S. military since a deserter was put to death in 1945, during World War II. Hasan is scheduled to be executed in December. In an interview on the 8th, Hegseth said he would let people see it and that the execution would be carried out publicly, because people need to know that crimes of this kind carry grave consequences.
Objections surfaced even within the Republican Party, Trump's political base. Vice President JD Vance, a devout Catholic, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, an evangelical Protestant, both said they would not watch the broadcast. Johnson told CBS News that his concern was that footage of a live broadcast could become a recruiting tool for future terrorists, adding that he needed to convey to the White House how some of his colleagues felt and that not everyone supported the idea.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski also said on X that no execution, including this one, needs to be broadcast live, adding that such a thing might be expected of terrorists or dictators but should not happen in the United States.
Most Americans also oppose televising Hasan's execution. In an online poll of 2,545 U.S. adults conducted from the 9th to the 13th by The Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos, 80% of respondents opposed a live broadcast of the firing squad execution. Among Republicans, who form the Trump administration's base, opposition (64%) outweighed support (34%). Democrats were overwhelmingly opposed, at 91%. Trump is seen as having backed away from the broadcast in the face of that public sentiment.
Trump has nonetheless been stepping up his calls to expand the death penalty in recent speeches. According to The Hill, Trump said at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, on the 3rd that he would pass legislation imposing the death penalty on large-scale drug traffickers, human traffickers and anyone who kills a police officer or law enforcement official.
At a rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, on the 14th, he said someone had leaked information about the airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and should be sent to prison and shot. He later said he also wanted the death penalty applied to those who kill first responders such as firefighters.