'A Maniac': Trump Just Endorsed a Firing Squad for the Fort Hood Shooter — and No Government Has Ever Livestreamed an Execution
In 60 seconds: President Trump on Friday publicly endorsed executing Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan by firing squad on Dec. 3 — one day after the Pentagon said the execution would be made publicly viewable, something no government in the world has ever done.
- Trump, at a White House Columbus Day event: "Death penalty through firing squad — and he deserves it... A maniac."
- The execution is set for Dec. 3 at Fort Hood; Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised it would be public: "We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public."
- Vice President Vance openly split with the plan from Ohio, doubting the livestream will happen and adding, "I'm not going to be watching it."
- Hasan killed 13 and wounded 32 in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting; the last U.S. military firing-squad execution was Pvt. Eddie Slovik in 1945.
- The Death Penalty Information Center says it has no record of any execution ever being livestreamed by any government.
No American alive has ever watched a government execution happen live on a screen. If the Pentagon's plan holds, that changes on December 3. And yesterday, the president of the United States put his name on it.
Related coverage: Read our earlier coverage of the original firing-squad announcement · Vance's latest break from the party line
What happened
At a White House Christopher Columbus Day event on Friday, President Donald Trump backed the military's plan to execute former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad. "Death penalty through firing squad — and he deserves it," Trump said. "Killed and wounded many, many people. A maniac."
Trump also said Hasan "killed 14 soldiers a couple of years ago." The record: 13 killed, 32 wounded, Nov. 5, 2009 — seventeen years ago. A verbal slip, but on a story this grave, the facts deserve to be exact.
Notably, Trump endorsed the firing squad — but did not volunteer an opinion on the Pentagon's far more controversial plan to make the execution publicly viewable. Asked directly whether Trump supports the livestream plan, the White House did not respond.
Latest verified facts
The execution is scheduled for Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, Texas — the scene of the crime — a location Pentagon officials have confirmed. A day earlier, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told Real America's Voice the execution would be made publicly viewable. "We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public," he said, adding that Hasan would face a "firing squad of soldiers."
The pushback came from an unexpected direction. Vice President JD Vance, traveling in Ohio, said he doubts the public-viewing plan will materialize: "I don't know that that's actually going to happen... I'm not going to be watching it."
Vance, a Catholic convert, wasn't the only Catholic objecting: U.S. bishops' conference president Archbishop Paul S. Coakley called it "a barbaric promotion of a culture of death" that "must be reconsidered."
Convicted in 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder for the 2009 rampage inside a Fort Hood medical building, Hasan has been on military death row since.
Why it matters
Here's the thing: the firing squad is the smaller half of this story. America has executed soldiers by firing squad before — the last was Pvt. Eddie Slovik, put to death for desertion on Jan. 31, 1945. The genuinely unprecedented part is the camera.
The last documented public execution in the U.S. was the 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky, before some 20,000 spectators. Since then, executions have happened behind walls, before a small official gallery. A publicly viewable federal military execution would cross a line that's held for ninety years.
Then there's the split at the top. A president endorsing the execution while his vice president publicly doubts the livestream and declines to watch isn't normal message discipline — and it's now a visible fault line inside the administration.
Impact on the USA and the world
No government in the world has ever livestreamed an execution — USA Today and the Death Penalty Information Center's Robin Maher both confirmed it. If Dec. 3 proceeds as Hegseth described, America goes first.
Hegseth's case is deterrence — "people need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things." His critics hear something else: a practice associated with Iran and Afghanistan, countries the U.S. condemns for public executions, adopted at home.
Hasan's guilt isn't the question — a military jury settled that in 2013. The question is what the country becomes when punishment becomes a broadcast. Do we watch? Should we? Vance has answered for himself.
What happens next
Eight weeks is a long time in a story like this. Treat Dec. 3 as a plan, not a promise. Military execution regulations were written for closed proceedings; media-access rules for a broadcast execution don't exist yet; and defense lawyers have every reason to challenge the method and the publicity in court. Vance's open doubt suggests even inside the administration, people expect the plan to change shape.
Our take: the execution is the likeliest thing to survive; the livestream is the likeliest thing to die. The machinery of military justice moves slowly and hates spectacle. Watch for the first legal filing, the first detailed Pentagon protocol — and whether Trump ever says the word "livestream" out loud. Until he does, the silence is the story.
Dec. 3 is eight weeks away. The only thing certain between now and then is the argument.