President Trump on Thursday canceled the Pentagon’s planned livestream of the execution of the Army officer who was convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting.
Pentagon officials said last week that the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas, would be broadcast via livestream, a decision Mr. Trump initially said he supported.
But in private, Mr. Trump quickly began to deliberate with his advisers amid widespread criticism of the decision, and learned after the announcement that Mr. Hasan is paralyzed, according to several people familiar with his thinking. The president’s main concern was whether broadcasting the execution would deter other mass shootings, according to a White House official who was granted anonymity to discuss his thinking.
In a social media post on Thursday, Mr. Trump said he still believed that a televised execution would be a “strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with terrorists and SCUM,” but that “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device.”
Mr. Trump added that only immediate families of Mr. Hasan’s victims could watch the execution in person.
The president and his advisers remain adamant that Mr. Hasan deserves to be executed, but the president’s decision to change course constituted a rare retreat in the face of enormous public pushback. The criticism came from Democrats, Republicans, military officials and faith leaders who maintained that broadcasting the execution would turn it into a barbaric source of entertainment that violated core democratic principles.
The decision is also likely to fuel questions about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership of the Pentagon, which has drawn heated criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
Top Pentagon civilian officials and the military’s Joint Staff were surprised and shocked by Mr. Hegseth’s plan to broadcast Mr. Hasan’s execution, and many expressed relief at Mr. Trump’s reversal, according to two senior U.S. officials. A spokesman for Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to comment on the matter on Thursday.
Sean Parnell, Mr. Hegseth’s spokesman, said in a statement that the president and the defense secretary agreed that the broadcast should not go forward.
“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth spoke about the decision to not livestream Hasan’s execution ahead of the Truth Social announcement,” Mr. Parnell said. “The secretary supports the president’s decision, and they are completely aligned.”
In recent days, Democrats and Republicans in Congress panned the plan to livestream the shooting, and even Vice President JD Vance expressed doubt about it.
“I’m not going to be watching it,” he said. He added: “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen.”
The plan to broadcast Mr. Hasan’s execution, which the Pentagon has said is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Dec. 3 at the same Army post where the massacre took place, had also drawn widespread condemnation from retired military officials, religious leaders and even some of the wounded soldiers who survived.
“This episode highlights the impulsive and dysfunctional civilian leadership from the White House and U.S. Department of Defense,” said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. “Secretary Hegseth deserves to be admonished for his lack of judgment, lack of strategy and poor communication — not just in regard to this one episode but throughout his disastrous tenure as secretary of defense.”
Mr. Hegseth’s plan to livestream the killing of Mr. Hasan prompted dozens of retired admirals, generals and other officers to publish an open letter opposing the plan.
“Livestreaming this execution would clearly violate the basic human dignity of the condemned prisoner,” they wrote on Wednesday. “It turns what should be the solemn and grave punishment of a member of our society for committing the most serious crimes into a carnival for the enjoyment of voyeurs and spectators.”
“This type of exploitative broadcasting — that debases human dignity — will taint the honor of the military that employs it, and a nation that allows it,” they added.
In an interview with Real America’s Voice, Mr. Hegseth had said he supported the public execution of Mr. Hasan “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
More than any of his predecessors, Mr. Hegseth has posted video clips online highlighting the lethality of American forces. These videos are part of what Mr. Hegseth has described as an effort to restore the military’s “warrior ethos” and intimidate U.S. enemies.
The clips, posted by the Pentagon as well as the White House, have celebrated U.S. military aircraft blowing up boats in the Caribbean and destroying Iranian forces. In one video shared by the White House, battlefield explosions in Iran are interspersed with footage of Mr. Hegseth giving a press briefing, set to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
Another video shows U.S. fighter jets hitting targets to “Here Comes the Boom,” a song by Nelly.
In the grainy videos released by the Pentagon, the enemy fighters’ faces are not visible. The carnage is obscured by plumes of fire and smoke. Still, the videos’ casting of deadly military actions as entertainment have left some senior military officials uneasy.
One concern, expressed by current and former officials, is that such gleeful celebrations of battlefield bloodshed gloss over the horrors of war and undermine support for the military campaign at home and overseas.
In an essay to be published in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, William H. McRaven, a retired admiral who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, described the importance of articulating clear moral objectives. “Although the moral high ground does not guarantee military victory, it is a foundation on which success rests,” he wrote.
Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
