Trump says Fort Hood shooter's firing squad execution will not be livestreamed

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the scheduled execution of Nidal Hasan, the man convicted in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, will not be broadcast online. The decision reverses a plan announced last week by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to make the execution public, according to the Tennessee Lookout.

Trump made the announcement in a post on his Truth Social platform. He wrote that showing the execution could have served as a deterrent, but that many people did not want to see it in any visual form, the Alabama Reflector reported.

"He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed," Trump wrote, as quoted by the Alaska Beacon.

Trump also said that only "the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose" would watch the execution in person, according to the Utah News Dispatch.

Hegseth's plan to make the execution public drew criticism from members of both parties last week, and lawmakers in Congress asked the administration to reconsider, the Tennessee Lookout reported. The outlet said Trump stated on Friday that he had approved the livestream, while also saying he would make a final decision on whether it would go forward.

Vice President JD Vance had expressed doubt that a public execution would be approved and had said he would not watch it, according to the same report.

Earlier this month, Trump approved Hasan's execution by firing squad, set for Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, the outlets reported. The Army installation is where the shooting took place on Nov. 5, 2009.

Hasan, a former Army Medical Corps psychiatrist from Virginia, was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in the attack, and he admitted to the killings, according to the Alabama Reflector. The outlets described it as the deadliest attack on a U.S. military base outside of combat.

Hasan was shot during the attack and is paralyzed from the waist down, the Utah News Dispatch reported.

The four outlets, all of which published the same report, did not indicate whether any legal challenges to the execution are pending or whether the administration's planning for the execution has changed beyond the decision not to stream it.

Compiled by True News from reporting by Tennessee Lookout, Alabama Reflector, Alaska Beacon and Utah News Dispatch. Each outlet's original story is linked below.

Originally published by True News: https://truenews.bagleyenterprises.net/stories/146