Trump's Pentagon plans to livestream an execution — death as public spectacle

The Pentagon says it will livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has promised that the December 3 execution will be public, after President Donald Trump approved the death sentence.

The news is appalling not because Hasan's crimes were anything less than monstrous. Thirteen people were murdered, more than 30 others were wounded, and their families have lived with the consequences for nearly two decades. Nothing in this article excuses that atrocity.

The scandal is that the Trump administration wants the state to kill a prisoner in front of spectators. The government has decided that an execution is not enough: the public should be invited to watch.

That is not justice. It is a political performance built around death.

THE POLITICS OF THE SPECTACLE

A government secure in its moral authority would have no need to turn punishment into a broadcast event. Hegseth's insistence on public visibility transforms a grave exercise of state power into a demonstration of brutality. The message is not simply that murder will be punished. It is that the state wants an audience for its power to kill.

Trump approved Hasan's death sentence on October 2, according to the Army's official account. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle subsequently set the execution for December 3 at Fort Hood. The Associated Press reported on October 8 that the Pentagon intends to livestream it.

The choice of a firing squad, at the site of the murders, is calculated for maximum symbolism. The addition of a livestream makes that symbolism unmistakable. It asks the public to witness not a trial, a verdict or an argument, but the destruction of a human being.

Military justice has reached this moment after a long absence of executions. The U.S. military has not executed a prisoner since 1961, and it has not used a firing squad since World War II. Instead of confronting that history with restraint, the administration is reviving the practice as a spectacle.

VICTIMS DESERVE MORE THAN A DEATH SHOW

The murdered soldiers and civilian victims of the Fort Hood attack should not be reduced to props in a government production. Their lives, grief and families deserve far more than a spectacle staged by officials eager to project ruthlessness.

Opposition to a public execution does not imply sympathy for a mass murderer. A government can hold someone accountable for horrific crimes without asking millions of viewers to watch the state kill him.

The distinction ought to be elementary: condemning murder and rejecting government-orchestrated public killing are perfectly compatible positions.

THE BARBARISM OF POWER

The administration's decision exposes an ugly idea of political leadership: that cruelty is proof of strength, that brutality is a moral virtue, and that death becomes a useful image when it can be displayed to an audience.

Public punishment was once a ritual of political authority, a warning that the sovereign could destroy the body of anyone who defied it. A livestreamed firing squad is that ancient logic delivered through modern communications technology.

A society does not become more civilized by making an execution easier to watch. It simply gives violence a larger audience.

Hasan may still pursue legal challenges that could delay the scheduled execution. The December 3 date is not proof that the killing will happen as planned.

But the administration's intention is already clear. Trump has authorized the death sentence. Hegseth has promoted the public dimension. The Pentagon has now announced the livestream.

The question facing Americans is not whether Hasan's murders were evil. They were. The question is whether the government should respond to them by turning another man's death into national programming.

Pamphlets rejects that spectacle. The victims of Fort Hood deserve remembrance and justice. The public deserves a government that does not worship the theatre of death.

Sources: U.S. Army Public Affairs, October 7, 2026, https://www.army.mil/article-amp/295989/army_sets_execution_date_for_convicted_murderer_nidal_hasan ; Associated Press, October 8, 2026, https://apnews.com/article/818853afc1be5c70fe41c5b781a8d559 ; Reuters, October 6, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-orders-firing-squad-gunman-who-killed-13-people-fort-hood-texas-2026-10-06/