US President Donald Trump said ‘absolutely’ when he was asked if he authorised or approved the livestreaming of the execution of Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Malik Hasan on Friday.
While leaving the White House, Trump was asked if he was involved in the Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announcement that Hasan’s execution by firing squad would be live-streamed, the Washington Post reported.
Trump initially told reporters, “I’m going to determine that, but he will be killed. He will be through firing squad. ... I really don’t care how he goes as long as he goes. And I think that the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”
When asked if he authorised the livestreaming, he said, “Did I approve? Absolutely.”
Hassan is a former US Army psychiatrist who shot 13 and injured 32 in 2009 at a Soldier Readiness Processing Centre in Fort Hood.
After the Pentagon confirmed that his execution on December 3 would be live-streamed, the Trump administration faced worldwide condemnation over the barbaric plan. If it were live-streamed, it would be the first time the US military broadcast an execution live on the internet.
Critics compared the Administration to dictatorships in Iran and Afghanistan.
Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, took to social media to say, “A barbaric idea, beneath our dignity as a country. Push back on this.”
The United Nations’ office of the high commissioner for human rights said that it would “breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.
Even Trump's own party disapproved of the idea. Vice President JD Vance said that he would not watch the planned livestream and expressed skepticism if it would be broadcast.
“I don't know that that's actually going to happen," he said when asked about the plan. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has disagreed with Vance publicly several times, also called the live stream of the execution “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, a retiring Republican from North Carolina, wrote on X saying making Hassan’s execution public and streaming it is “beyond disgusting.”
Justin Mazzola, Deputy Director of Research at Amnesty International USA, said: “Livestreaming the taking of a life by firing squad would only compound the cruelty of the death penalty and perpetuate the cycle of violence that the authorities purportedly seek to end.
“This announcement adds to the display of cruelty that we have just witnessed in the senseless pursuit of the execution of Chrita Pike in Tennessee. The US death penalty is irredeemably broken. It is high time that the US authorities, at all levels, use their power to show human rights leadership and end this ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment once and for all.”
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr meanwhile told CNBC that the potential livestream would fall outside the FCC’s regulatory power.
