Public opinion triumphs over Trump’s spectacle

Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas, seventeen years ago, is still scheduled to be executed by firing squad on December 3 at the military post where he carried out the attack. What has changed, however, is the audience. After a public outcry, President Donald Trump withdrew the administration’s plan to televise the execution.

In a social media post, Trump presented the reversal as a concession to people who did not want to see a man die. “Many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” he wrote. Earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had defended the proposed broadcast by arguing that “people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things”.

Despite weeks of debate over whether the execution should be broadcast, the administration has never explained why the public needs to watch Hasan die to understand that he has been sentenced to death. From the onset, the proposal drew opposition from an unusually broad coalition. Democrats and Republicans in Congress criticised it, religious leaders questioned its morality, and dozens of retired admirals, generals and other military officers warned that broadcasting the killing would damage the armed forces and the country they serve.

Even Vice-President JD Vance expressed doubts. “I’m not going to be watching it,” he told members of the media, adding that he did not know whether the broadcast would actually happen. House Speaker Mike Johnson, one of Trump’s most loyal allies, also said the country should not be doing this.

For an administration accustomed to brushing aside criticism as partisan hostility, the breadth of the opposition made the proposed live execution harder to defend. These were not simply Democrats objecting to a Republican president. Former senior officers, religious figures and lawmakers from both parties were raising concerns about what the government was proposing to do in the country’s name.

In an open letter, dozens of retired military officers said the broadcast “would clearly violate the basic human dignity of the condemned prisoner”. It would turn “what should be the solemn and grave punishment of a member of our society for committing the most serious crimes into a carnival for the enjoyment of voyeurs and spectators”, they wrote. Their concern was not limited to Hasan. “This type of exploitative broadcasting that debases human dignity will taint the honor of the military that employs it, and a nation that allows it,” the letter said.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island also criticised the judgment behind the proposal, describing it as evidence of “the impulsive and dysfunctional civilian leadership from the White House and US Department of Defense”. Hegseth, the senator added, deserved criticism for his judgment, strategy and communication, not only over the proposed broadcast but throughout his tenure as defence secretary.

Human rights experts argue that the government already had the authority to carry out Hasan’s sentence. Broadcasting his death, they said, would not have changed the punishment or made the conviction any more conclusive. “It would simply have allowed the state to display its power before an audience on a scale that would have been impossible in an earlier era.”

From the Romans

Public executions have served a purpose for centuries. The Romans made death a form of public entertainment, while authoritarian governments have used executions to intimidate opponents and demonstrate control. The Taliban and Islamic State have also circulated footage of killings to terrorise audiences and project an image of power.

A livestream would have given the American government a role in a practice it has long condemned when carried out by others. The images would not have remained under the administration’s control, either. They could have been copied, edited and redistributed by extremist groups and hostile governments, potentially reaching audiences far removed from those the Pentagon intended to influence.

The administration’s claim that the broadcast would deter future attacks was particularly difficult to establish and reason. A public execution might frighten some people, but there is no guarantee that the intended audience would interpret it as a warning. Images of state violence can also provoke anger, reinforce existing grievances and become propaganda for movements seeking recruits.

Broader impact

If anything, history has a few lessons on these grand executions. More recently, the hanging of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein served as a cautionary example. His execution was filmed, and footage of the event circulated widely. Taunts directed at the former Iraqi dictator by witnesses became part of the recording, which fed into the sectarian tensions surrounding the American-led occupation of Iraq. The broadcast did not just communicate the fact that a sentence had been carried out, but it became part of the political struggle over how that killing would be remembered.

The circumstances of Hasan’s case are different, but the risks are familiar even now. Extremist groups could have used the footage to portray the US as hypocritical, while governments hostile to Washington would have had an easy way to attack its claims to defend human rights. A broadcast intended to demonstrate American authority could have served precisely the audiences the administration would want to discredit and Hasan may have emerged as a martyr for extremists and their audiences.

There is also a wider concern about how the Trump administration presents military force. Hegseth has shared footage emphasising the lethality of American operations, while the White House and Pentagon have circulated videos of aircraft destroying boats in the Caribbean and striking Iranian targets. Some clips have been set to popular music, giving military action the treatment of online entertainment.

Military operations and an execution are not the same thing. But the growing use of violence as material for public consumption raises questions about the message the Trump White House wants to send. The armed forces must be able to use force when necessary, but experts argue that they must also retain the public’s confidence that decisions about its use are made with judgment and restraint.

Retired admiral William H McRaven, who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, made a similar argument in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs: “Although the moral high ground does not guarantee military victory, it is a foundation on which success rests.”

The retired officers who opposed the livestream were defending more than the dignity of a condemned prisoner. They were warning that the military’s reputation could suffer if its authority were used to stage a public spectacle without any clear operational purpose.

The US has kept executions out of public view for generations. The last widely recognised public execution in the country took place in Kentucky in 1936, when the execution of Rainey Bethea attracted an estimated crowd of 20,000. Capital punishment continued after public executions disappeared, but the practice of gathering spectators to watch a person die ended and for good reason.

The proposed livestream of Hasan’s execution would have brought that practice back through technology capable of carrying images around the world almost instantly. The fact that the broadcast would have been digital rather than a gathering in a town square would not have changed its essential character. The public would still have been invited to watch the state kill a prisoner.

All that said, Hasan’s crimes were appalling, and nothing about opposing the broadcast of his execution requires anyone to minimise the suffering of his victims or their families. But a person’s conviction does not remove every obligation the state has towards them. The severity of a crime cannot be the sole measure of whether a human being retains dignity, particularly when that person is entirely in the state’s power.

People can support capital punishment and still oppose turning an execution into entertainment. Others may reject the death penalty altogether, but neither position requires the public to accept that a condemned person’s final moments should be made available for mass consumption.

On the other hand, the prisoner has no meaningful say in whether the government broadcasts his death. The state decides how the sentence is carried out, who may witness it and what information is made public. If nothing else does, that imbalance makes restraint especially important.

Legal and moral issues

There are also unresolved legal questions and critics have argued that livestreaming the execution could raise concerns under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. There is no established ruling directly addressing the constitutionality of a broadcast in these circumstances, so it remains uncertain whether such a challenge would succeed.

The moral objection does not depend on a court settling that question. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the Catholic archbishop for the military services, said the proposal “flies in the face of the moral and ethical and theological basis on which we operate”. His criticism reflected a concern that the state could carry out its lawful duties without turning a person’s death into a public event.

Public opinion

The campaign against the livestream was never meant to save Hasan’s life. Its achievement was narrower, it prevented the government from making his death a spectacle. If anything, it tells us that public opinion, organised across political and religious divisions, proved capable of imposing a limit on a decision that the administration had initially defended with confidence.

Military veterans worried about the honour of the armed forces. Religious leaders challenged the morality of the proposal. Lawmakers from both parties questioned its wisdom. Their combined opposition made it more difficult for the White House to dismiss the criticism or proceed without paying a political and institutional price.

That said, there is no guarantee that the administration has learned a broader lesson. The cancellation does not mean it has changed its approach to human rights, abandoned its punitive politics or ruled out similar proposals in the future. Still, the retreat shows what can happen when opposition extends beyond one political camp and refuses to let an outrageous proposal pass as regular business. Public outrage, when it cuts across political divides, can still add pressure even on governments that display all the trappings of an authoritarian regime.