Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Sometimes, even during the Trump era, backlash still works. President Donald Trump on Thursday canceled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the U.S. military’s upcoming execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. This probably shouldn’t have been a hard decision or even needed to be a decision in the first place. The livestream, which Hegseth announced last week, was an instantly reviled idea. The U.S. long ago abandoned the practice of public executions, which are still only conducted by pariah states. The plan drew immediate bipartisan condemnation from members of Congress and triggered global revulsion. According to two new polls, the vast majority of Americans are opposed to the idea. The U.S. Army general who approved Hasan’s death sentence following his court martial was against it, too, as were 72 former top military officials. It wasn’t even clear how or where the Pentagon would be able to livestream it or could without violating U.S. Army regulations. Politically, Hegseth’s apparently half-baked plan was dead on arrival, even if it took Trump nearly a week to officially cancel it.
“Many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” Trump conceded on Truth Social before canceling the broadcast. That clearly excludes Hegseth, who seemed thrilled with the idea and promoted it as a kind of high-noon comeuppance that would show the world how hardcore the Pentagon was about capital punishment. Nothing deters mass shootings better than making a public spectacle of shooting the shooter, the former Fox News personality suggested. Trump was reportedly not aware of the plan before Hegseth announced it, and he soon after distanced himself from the Pentagon’s decision and insisted he would make the final call.
The execution itself, which Hegseth pushed for and Trump approved, is still planned for December 3 at Fort Hood but only family members of Hasan’s victims will be invited to watch. It will be the first U.S. military execution since 1961, and the first execution by firing squad since World War II — which Hegseth has also seemed excited about.
According to multiple reports, in private, Trump worried that executing someone live on the internet may not look good, particularly after he learned that Hasan was paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. Per CNN earlier this week:
One of the sources familiar with the discussions pointed to Trump’s deep understanding of imagery as a key reason why he may decide to ditch plans for the livestream. The president has also listened to the argument that a public execution by firing squad could serve as propaganda for foreign adversaries and terrorists to try to paint Hasan as a martyr, a Trump adviser told CNN.
CNN reported that the Pentagon was also reevaluating the livestream plan and would perhaps omit the actual killing from the broadcast, which is what China did the last time it aired a public execution on state television in 2013.
This isn’t the first time the Hegseth has become a conspicuous liability for Trump, but it is one of the only times that Trump has so publicly rebuked his Defense Secretary. It also comes at a particularly precarious time for both. With the midterms looming, one of the issues dragging Trump and the GOP down is the unpopularity of the Iran war and its economic consequences. Hegseth has been one of the war’s biggest cheerleaders within Trump’s inner circle, both to start and further escalate it. If Trump decides to abandon or change tactics in the war, there is no one he can more easily blame and get rid of than Hegseth.
Even putting aside his first fireable offense, Signalgate, there have now been countless scandals and negative news cycles regarding Hegseth’s reign at the Pentagon, where he has purged all who oppose him and pursued bizarre policies like testosterone testing for all U.S. servicemembers. He has also downplayed and underreported the number of U.S. casualties from the Iran war.
Right after the GOP lost both chambers of Congress in the 2006 midterms, partly due to the unpopularity of the Iraq War quagmire, President George W. Bush ousted his Defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. This livestream debacle is the first big sign that Trump’s patience for the public spectacle that is Pete Hegseth may finally be running out — and that the so-called secretary of War may be weeks away from having to find a new place to do his pushups.
