Trump calls off livestream of Fort Hood gunman's firing-squad execution after opposition from church leaders and lawmakers

President Donald Trump said on Thursday, Oct. 15, that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan will not be livestreamed. That reverses a plan Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the week before. Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. He is scheduled to be executed by an Army firing squad at Fort Hood on Dec. 3.

"I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent ... but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed." He added that "the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose."

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Trump and Hegseth discussed the decision before the announcement. "The secretary supports the president's decision, and they are completely aligned," he said, Stars and Stripes reported. On Oct. 8, Hegseth had told Real America's Voice, "We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public," and the Pentagon later said the execution would be livestreamed.

The plan had drawn objections from religious leaders. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called it "a barbaric promotion of a culture of death" that "must be reconsidered," OSV News reported. On Oct. 14, the Board of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church called on the president and the defense secretary "to immediately reverse the decision to publicly livestream the execution," writing that "human death is not a performance." After the announcement, Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, called the move "a step in the right direction," adding that "any execution is a failure."

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released hours before the announcement found that 80% of Americans said the execution should not be streamed live, while about 53% supported executing Hasan by firing squad, CNBC reported. It would be the U.S. military's first execution since 1961 and the first by a military firing squad since World War II. CNBC noted that Hasan could seek to delay it with a new legal challenge.