Trump Says Fort Hood Shooter's Execution Will Not Be Livestreamed

President Donald Trump said on 15 October 2026 that the military execution of Nidal Hasan will not be livestreamed, reversing a plan announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The reversal followed backlash to Hegseth's decision, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Hegseth had announced that the public would be able to watch Hasan's execution. He said the execution is set for 3 December at Fort Hood, Texas, and that Hasan would face a firing squad of soldiers, according to The Guardian.

Hasan is a former army major and psychiatrist. He killed 13 people and wounded 32 in a shooting at Fort Hood in November 2009. A military court sentenced him to death in August 2013, according to The Guardian.

Hegseth attends a church in Washington, DC, that belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, known as CREC. Allies from his CREC church backed a plan for a public execution of Hasan. Douglas Wilson, an Idaho pastor who co-founded CREC, told the Guardian: "I support the execution of Hasan, and prefer public executions to private".

Wilson told the Guardian he prefers firing squads to lethal injection, citing what he described as the recent botched execution by injection in Tennessee. He also said the Pentagon has responsibility to head off ghoulish behavior around a livestreamed execution. Wilson said he had not spoken to Hegseth or anyone in his department about the issue.

Wilson separately said he prefers public executions to those conducted in the recesses of a prison, saying executions in the scriptures were public. Pope Leo and Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the archbishop to the U.S. military, condemned Hegseth's livestreamed execution plan, according to The Guardian.