Trump Wanted to Put a Man's Death on Display: Now He's Calling Off Hegseth's Execution Spectacle

Donald Trump has canceled the planned public broadcast of an execution. What Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced just last week as a deterrent display of American state power is now being pulled from public view after fierce criticism. Former military psychiatrist Nidal Hasan is scheduled to be executed by firing squad at 1 p.m. on December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas. The execution itself is still going ahead. Only the cameras are supposed to stay off. An administration that initially wanted to broadcast a man's death around the world has suddenly discovered that even its own supporters have certain limits when it comes to watching someone die.

Hasan was convicted of murdering 13 people and injuring more than 30 others in his 2009 attack at Fort Hood. There is no question about the severity of his crimes. Hegseth, however, had something else in mind. He wanted the public to be able to watch the condemned man being shot. After all, people needed to understand that such acts carry serious consequences. In an interview with far-right activist Jack Posobiec, he therefore announced plans for a public broadcast. The government was going to demonstrate its power to punish in front of rolling cameras. Of all things, an execution, whose irreversible nature gives it the gravest weight of any government decision, was supposed to become a lesson for spectators.

Opposition came from both sides of the political aisle. Republicans objected, as did Democrats. House Speaker Mike Johnson warned that the footage could eventually be used as recruiting material by terrorist organizations. Even Vice President JD Vance admitted that he would not watch the shooting. Trump had previously given the public broadcast his explicit approval. Now he said such a spectacle might have had a powerful deterrent effect. However, many good and well-meaning people would rather not watch Hasan die. The victims' family members would be allowed to witness the execution in person if they wished. They deserved to witness justice, the president wrote.

The pressure worked. As recently as October 9, when Trump was asked whether he had personally approved the public broadcast, he answered with an unmistakable "Absolutely." Just days later, his administration began backing down. The worldwide broadcast of the execution has now been canceled. We, too, are involved in lawsuits that have already been filed against the plan. We had already announced that on October 9. Those lawsuits will not be withdrawn for the time being. With a president who can reverse his decisions within days, it would be extraordinarily reckless to treat a statement on social media as a reliable guarantee. The lawsuits already filed raise serious constitutional questions. A government-organized display of a person's death before a worldwide audience directly implicates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. There is also the protection of minors, who are normally barred from attending executions, while a worldwide broadcast would effectively eliminate those safeguards. Particularly troubling is the fact that U.S. Army regulations do not explicitly provide for such a public broadcast. That raised a fundamental question: On what legal grounds did the Pentagon intend to turn a military execution into a worldwide spectacle of government violence in the first place? The resistance drew a line that this administration apparently could no longer recognize on its own.

Public executions belong to some of the darkest chapters in the history of government punishment. According to Amnesty International, Afghanistan and Iran were the only countries where public executions were known to have taken place in 2025. By broadcasting an execution worldwide, the United States would have joined a very small group of nations. Its last public execution apparently took place in 1936. Back then, an estimated 20,000 spectators gathered to watch the hanging of Rainey Bethea, a Black American who had confessed to raping and murdering a 70-year-old white woman. Almost 90 years later, the U.S. Defense Department wanted to make the potential audience virtually unlimited through a worldwide broadcast.

The last execution carried out by the U.S. military took place in 1961. That was when soldier John Bennett was hanged. Hasan's execution would be the first military execution by firing squad since 1945. Those historical gaps alone illustrate the extraordinary significance of the execution ahead. Hegseth wanted to turn it into a public demonstration as well. The fact that even leading Republicans recoiled from the idea says a great deal about the distance between political displays of power and basic human decency.

Trump has switched off the cameras for now. The sentence still stands, and so does the date. On December 3, a man is scheduled to die by government order. The families of those murdered have carried their losses with them since 2009. No television broadcast would change that. The administration's decision to cancel the broadcast does not erase the fact that it planned to let millions of people watch a man being shot to death. Public pressure stopped the broadcast. What kind of idea of justice could have produced such a plan in the first place remains the far more disturbing question.