Trump scraps plan to livestream execution after broad backlash

The firing squad execution of a convicted military base shooter will not be livestreamed, US President Donald Trump announced Thursday, canceling a contentious plan by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The move to livestream Nidal Hasan's execution was widely opposed at home and abroad, prompting outrage from both US Democratic and Republican politicians, the Catholic Church and the United Nations.

The cancellation is a blow to Hegseth, who is already under fire over the stalemated Iran war and its fallout, which are weighing on Trump's Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections.

Hasan "will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The US president indicated he did not personally oppose the streaming plan, saying it "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," Trump said, adding that the execution could still be viewed in person by immediate family of the victims if they wanted to do so.

Hasan's execution - scheduled for 3 December at Fort Hood, Texas, where he gunned down 13 people in 2009 - is set to be the first by a US military firing squad since 1945.

Hegseth said last week that "we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public," later confirming that the plan was to livestream the execution.

"People need to understand that...there's serious consequence for these types of things," he said.

Most Americans opposed

Backlash to the plan quickly grew following Hegseth's announcement.

The United Nations said streaming the execution would amount to "torture," while the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said it was a "barbaric promotion of a culture of death," and both Australia and Britain's prime ministers described it as "abhorrent."

Vice President JD Vance, who recently released a memoir on his Catholic faith, said he would not watch the execution if the plan went forward.

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Thursday found that eight in 10 Americans opposed the livestreaming of the execution.

Lawmakers from both main US parties have said they are against it, including top House Republican Mike Johnson, who said it could be a "recruiting tool for future terrorists."

Dozens of retired US military officers also warned in an open letter against broadcasting the execution.

It "will taint the honor of the military that employs it, and a nation that allows it," and "will ensure that Hasan becomes a martyr for attacking and killing his fellow soldiers," said the officers, including more than 40 generals and admirals.

The last US military execution was carried out in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder.

The Death Penalty Information Center says 135 troops have been executed by the US military since 1916.

According to rights group Amnesty International, at least 17 public executions are known to have been carried out in 2025 - six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.

Twelve of the 13 people Hasan killed and 30 of those he wounded were soldiers. He was shot by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack and is paralyzed from the waist down.

Hasan chose to conduct his own defense during the trial but called no witnesses and gave no testimony, and made no attempt to deny the charges.

He was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013.

The court that convicted Hasan was told he was opposed to the US military's occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he had spoken online with an alleged Al-Qaeda figure, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

(AFP)