Trump cancels Hegseth's plan to livestream Fort Hood shooter's execution

President Trump said Thursday that the federal government will not livestream the Dec. 3 execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army major convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, reversing a plan that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had announced roughly a week earlier.

Trump made the reversal in a post on Truth Social, writing that broadcasting the execution "might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan," but that "many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die." He added: "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed." Hasan's execution itself remains on the calendar; only the public broadcast has been called off. A White House official told NBC News that Trump had initially embraced Hegseth's idea but changed course after learning that Hasan has been paralyzed from the waist down since 2009, when he was shot while being apprehended — a detail the president reportedly had not known when he first signed off on the plan.

The case against Hasan

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, opened fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009, killing 13 people and wounding dozens more in one of the deadliest attacks ever carried out on a U.S. military installation. A court-martial convicted him in August 2013 on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder, and a military jury sentenced him to death days later. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces affirmed the conviction and sentence in March 2024, and the Supreme Court denied Hasan's final petition for review in March 2025.

Under military regulations, only the president can approve a death sentence handed down by a court-martial, and Trump did so on Oct. 2. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle then directed on Oct. 6 that the execution be carried out by firing squad, rather than the lethal injection the service had previously planned to administer at a federal facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. The Army's own announcement setting the execution date confirms Hasan will be put to death at 1 p.m. Central time on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, the site of the 2009 attack. It would be the U.S. military's first execution since 1961 and its first by firing squad since 1945. Hasan is currently held at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, alongside the military's three other death-row inmates.

A week of bipartisan pushback

The reversal followed a rocky week for Hegseth's plan. He had announced, reportedly without informing other Pentagon and Army officials in advance, that the execution would be open for the public to watch, telling an interviewer that Hasan "is going to get a firing squad of soldiers, and we'll make sure that people are able to watch it." The idea drew swift, bipartisan pushback. Vice President JD Vance distanced himself from it the next day, saying "I don't know that's going to happen" and "I'm not going to be watching it." House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he had concerns about the "policy implications" of a public broadcast, saying "I wouldn't be watching it if it was aired" and noting "not everybody is in favor of the idea." Critics, including some lawmakers, warned that footage of a military execution could be repurposed as propaganda or a recruiting tool by extremist groups.

"He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed."

Trump's statement did not mention Hegseth by name, and the Pentagon declined to elaborate beyond the president's own post, according to NPR's reporting on how the dispute unfolded inside the administration. The episode is the latest to draw scrutiny to Hegseth's handling of high-profile Pentagon decisions, though he has otherwise retained the president's confidence through a string of earlier controversies during his tenure.

The dispute is also the latest flashpoint in a broader debate over transparency in capital punishment. Supporters of a public broadcast have argued that showing the consequences of terrorism and mass violence serves a deterrent purpose; opponents, including some of the same lawmakers who distanced themselves from Hegseth's plan this week, have warned that execution footage circulating online could be edited, decontextualized or used by extremist movements as recruitment material, regardless of the government's intent in releasing it. That argument appears to have carried the day inside the White House, even as Trump's own language made clear he still views the underlying case as a justified use of the harshest available punishment.

What happens next

The Dec. 3 firing-squad execution remains scheduled and is unaffected by Thursday's reversal; only the plan to broadcast it has been scrapped. Under Trump's revised approach, immediate family members of Hasan's victims may still choose to witness the execution in person. The Army has not carried out a firing-squad execution in roughly 80 years and has yet to detail the modern protocol it will use, including how soldiers will be assigned to carry it out — a role with no standing precedent in the current force. Hasan's paralysis has also raised unresolved logistical questions about transporting him from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Hood, concerns his defense team has previously flagged, since the execution is set to take place at the base where the attack occurred rather than at the Leavenworth facility where he has been held for more than a decade.

No last-minute legal challenge or clemency petition had been filed as of Thursday, and the Pentagon has not said whether it will revisit any other aspect of the plan before December. The reversal leaves Hegseth's standing with the president, by most accounts otherwise intact through a series of earlier controversies, as the one open question to come out of an episode that began as his initiative and ended with the president publicly overriding it.