President Donald Trump is canceling the execution livestream for the firing squad death penalty for Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 service members in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.
The president said that “immediate families of the victims” will be able to attend the execution in person if they wish to do so, and his execution will occur “as scheduled” on Dec. 3.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth initially said that the execution through firing squad would be available for the public to watch, generating a mix of public pushback and praise.
The president described Hasan as a “former U.S. Army Major turned traitor” who also hurt “32 more innocent people” in addition to those killed in a Truth Social post on Thursday morning. He said that an error by the Obama administration played a role in the tragedy.
“Barack Hussein Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intercepted electronic communications between Hasan and the radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki,” he wrote. “When reviewed by his FBI terrorism task force, investigators concluded that Hasan's emails were not a threat. This assessment of the Obama Administration’s actions was later considered to be a key intelligence failure.”
The president said that a public execution “might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM,” but added that “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device.”
Last week, Vice President JD Vance said that he personally would not watch a livestream, but stressed that “this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” according to Politico.
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