The Pentagon has announced that the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed for the world to see.
The news was confirmed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Oct. 8, who revealed that the execution that’ll take place on Dec. 3 will be livestreamed "because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things.”
At an unrelated White House event on Oct. 9, President Donald Trump, who’d previously approved the livestream plan, said of the upcoming execution, “Death penalty through firing squad, and he deserves it.”
The last public execution that took place in the U.S. happened in 1936, when Rainey Bethea was hanged for rape in Kentucky. That execution reportedly gathered a crowd of around 20,000 people, according to CBS News.
Hasan is an ex-Army major who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. Prior to the San Bernardino attack in 2015, it was considered the deadliest mass shooting on an American military base and the deadliest Islamic terrorist attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001 (Hasan yelled Allahu Akbar before shooting victims).
Vice President JD Vance has cast doubt about whether the execution will actually be livestreamed, but he told reporters that if it is, “I’m not going to be watching it.”
“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” Vance said.
