The president of the United States spent a week defending the idea of streaming a man's death to the public, then dropped it because 'many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die.' It took the United Nations, the Catholic bishops, a Republican senator from Alaska, and comparisons to Iran and Afghanistan to get him there.
The Retreat, In The President's Own Words
On Thursday, Trump posted that broadcasting the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan "might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan." Then came the pivot. "Many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device."
The execution is still on. Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, will die by firing squad as scheduled. The only thing that changed is the audience. Victims' families can attend in person if they choose, as The Guardian reported, and the general public gets nothing.
This would have been the first military execution in more than 60 years. It would also have been the first execution in American history broadcast to the public. Somebody in this administration looked at that sentence and thought it sounded like a great idea.
Hegseth Said Yes, Trump Said Absolutely, Then Trump Said Maybe
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week that the execution would be a public event. In an interview with Real America's Voice, he said it was necessary "because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."
On Friday, Trump told reporters he "absolutely" approved the livestream. On Saturday, he said he hadn't made a final decision. "There are two thoughts: don't show it and show it," he said. "'Cause you know, by showing it, maybe other people won't be doing what he did."
That is a sitting president workshopping the ethics of a televised killing the way a guy at a bar debates whether to text his ex. Two thoughts. Show it, don't show it. Then Thursday arrived and the Pentagon announced that Trump and Hegseth "are completely aligned," which is a remarkable thing to say about two men who were not aligned for roughly a week.
The Vice President Wants No Part Of This
JD Vance was asked about the plan on Friday and gave an answer that should be studied by crisis communicators for years. "I don't know that that's actually going to happen," he told reporters. Then: "I'm not going to be watching it."
That's the second-in-command of the administration publicly doubting his own government's announced plan and pre-announcing that he'd change the channel. Meanwhile, Markwayne Mullin, who heads the Department of Homeland Security, went on CBS over the weekend to defend it. "No one has to watch it," he said, before praising Trump for "restoring American values."
Mullin was out there carrying the water on Sunday for a plan that was dead by Thursday. Somebody should check whether anyone sent him the memo, or whether the memo was also still under review.
Republicans, Democrats, The UN, And The Catholic Bishops Agree
The coalition against this was spectacular. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian American Democrat elected to Congress, wrote: "In Trump's America, we're doing public executions now. WTF. This is what happens under brutal dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan."
The Republicans were not far behind. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said there was "no need to livestream any execution, including this one," adding she "would expect this from terrorists and dictators, but not here in America." Rep. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania said an execution "shouldn't be a live-streamed spectacle" and that it shouldn't become "entertainment."
The UN human rights office warned that broadcasting the killing would amount to a public execution and "breach the absolute prohibition of torture." The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops called the plan "a barbaric promotion of a culture of death." When Murkowski and the Catholic bishops and Iranian American progressives all land on the same page, the page is usually right.
Nobody Is Defending Hasan, Which Is The Point
Let's be clear about who this is. Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood. He was convicted. He is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by law enforcement during the attack and now uses a wheelchair. The bishops themselves said "in no way can Hasan's actions be condoned."
None of the criticism was about whether he deserves his sentence. It was about what kind of country puts the state's most extreme act on a stream and calls it a deterrent. The deterrence argument was always thin. Mass shooters are not typically weighing the production values of a future execution before they act.
And the families? Trump's own post concedes they can watch in person, which is the only audience that was ever defensible. The plan was never about them. It was about the spectacle, and about how it would look.
The Dingo Take
"SCUM like Hasan." That's the president's phrase from the same post in which he walked back a plan to broadcast a killing, and it tells you everything about the instinct behind the whole thing. The impulse was never justice. It was theater, with a body count and a firing squad and a deterrence argument bolted on afterward to make it sound like policy.
The retreat is good, and we should say so plainly. But notice what the retreat was not. It wasn't a moral awakening. Trump didn't say it would be wrong. He said it "might have been a strong deterrent" and that people "would rather not watch." That is a man reading the room, not reconsidering the idea. If the polling had gone the other way, we'd be setting our DVRs.
The real lesson is how close this got. A defense secretary announced it on a friendly network, a Cabinet member defended it on CBS, and the president called it approved before calling it undecided. The only thing that stopped it was a loud, bipartisan, international chorus of people saying the obvious. Next time the idea might not leak out quite so early, and the chorus might not show up in time.
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