Last week, defense secretary and former TV personality Pete Hegseth shocked the world when he announced that the upcoming execution by firing squad of a mass shooter would be livestreamed online — an unfathomable act of cruelty for all to see.
Nidal Hasan, a former army psychiatrist, killed 13 people at the Fort Hood US Army post in Texas in 2009. The plans for broadcasting the killing came just days after officials failed to end the life of Christa Pike, who had been on death row for decades.
But now, even president Donald Trump is seemingly growing wary of the damning optics of televising a brutal execution in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections — which would’ve been the first execution by military firing squad in the United States since November 1945 and the country’s first public execution since 1936.
In a rambling Thursday post on Truth Social, Trump said that while broadcasting the murder would serve as a “strong deterrent,” “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device.”
“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” he added. However, he said that the victims will still be able to watch the horrific event if they choose to.
“They deserve to witness JUSTICE!” Trump wrote.
The sudden backpedaling raises plenty of questions. The president had personally signed off on the execution last week. Whether he also approved on the livestream remains unclear.
Unsurprisingly, public support for watching an incarcerated man be riddled with bullets on the internet was extremely low. Trump’s announcement came just hours after ABC News and the Washington Post found that a whopping eight out of ten Americans opposed the idea of a livestream in an Ipsos poll.
Republicans were slightly more inclined to approve, with 34 percent arguing it should be livestreamed, but even there, an overwhelming 64 percent disagreed. Even more than half of self-identified MAGA Republicans said they didn’t approve. Only eight percent of Democrats approved of the plan.
More on the execution: Well, This Is the First Time America Has Livestreamed an Execution by Firing Squad