On Thursday, Donald Trump called off the Pentagon’s highly controversial plans to livestream a firing squad execution that is still on schedule for December 3. Trump supports the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood. But sources close to Trump told CNN that the president was blindsided last week when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the event—which is the first US execution of a soldier since World War II—would be livestreamed.
Backlash to the livestream was immediate and crossed political divides. On the morning Trump canceled the plans, an ABC News poll found 8 in 10 Americans were against the livestream, including a 55 percent majority of MAGA Republicans. Insiders told ABC News that Trump feared that “broadcasting the execution could super charge anti-American propaganda or reflect poorly on the US.” Privately, Trump had remarked that “he did not initially know that Hasan was paralyzed from the waist down,” CNN reported.
As one Army officer appalled by Hegseth’s announcement explained in a separate CNN report, livestreaming the execution “takes away everything America stands for.” “The generational harm caused by allowing troops in uniform to stand in front of a man in a wheelchair and watch him get shot to death is irreparable,” the officer, who was deployed multiple times in the Middle East, told CNN. On Truth Social, Trump confirmed that Hasan “will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.” Families of victims will still be able to watch the execution, but the execution will not be broadcast for the public.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
