Trump weighs livestream execution amid bipartisan backlash

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan "absolutely" deserves the death penalty by firing squad but told reporters he has yet "to make a determination" on whether it will be livestreamed.

"I don't really care how he goes, as long as he goes," Trump said, referring to Hasan.   

What did Hegseth and the Pentagon say about Hasan's execution?

Trump's remarks comes a day after the Pentagon said it would livestream the execution of 56-year-old Hasan, a former US Army psychiatrist who murdered 13 people and injured 32 others in Fort Hood in Texas in 2009.

In a video shared by the Pentagon regarding the execution, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said "We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that there's serious consequence for these types of things." 

Hasan is currently being held on death row in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. His execution is slated for December 3.

He is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair after he was shot by an officer responding to the Fort Hood shooting. 

JD Vance says he would not watch livestream of execution

US Vice President JD Vance, speaking to reporters in Cincinnati on Friday, also said he doesn't know whether the livestream is "actually going to happen."

"If it is shown publicly," Vance added, "I'm not going to be watching it." Vance is a devout member of the Catholic Church, which opposes the death penalty. 

"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," the US vice president said.     

Livestream plan faces bipartisan backlash

The Pentagon's plan to broadcast the execution has been met with a fierce backlash from within Trump's own Republican Party and the opposition Democrats.  

"I absolutely support the sentence of death, but livestreaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that," said Republican Representative Austin Scott of Georgia.

Public executions are common in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and the so-called Islamic State (IS) also engaged in public beheadings when the group controlled large swathes of Syria and Iraq in the 2010s. Iran is another country that carries out public executions.  

Republican Congressman Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania said "an execution shouldn't be a livestreamed spectacle." 

"The focus should be on justice for the victims and their families, not turning an execution into entertainment," he said in a statement posted on X. "Their pain deserves respect, not a public show."

Democratic Congressman Eugene Vindman of Virginia, who said he oversaw legal proceedings following the Fort Hood attack, said livestreaming Hasan's execution "is what terrorists and authoritarian regimes do. It's un-American."

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Pentagon chief Hegseth is "turning the Fort Hood execution into a gruesome inhumane spectacle." 

The UN human rights office (OHCHR) also strongly condemned the ideaof a livestreamed execution, while the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called the plana "barbaric promotion of a culture of death."  

Edited by: Karl Sexton 

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