The firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan won’t be livestreamed after all, President Donald Trump said Thursday, following bipartisan backlash and criticism from some survivors of the mass shooting. Click the link in the first comment for the full story ⬇️ 📷: Aaron Schwartz/Getty; Joe Raedle/Getty

The firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan won’t be livestreamed after all, President Donald Trump said Thursday, following bipartisan backlash and criticism from some survivors of the mass shooting.

Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Hasan’s execution would be “public,” and a Pentagon spokesperson subsequently clarified that it would be “livestreamed.”

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, where he killed 13 people and injured 32 others in 2009. He was convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder at a court-martial in August 2013. Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot four times by law enforcement officers during the attack and now uses a wheelchair.

In a Thursday morning Truth Social post, Trump argued that livestreaming the execution could serve as “a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan.”

However, he acknowledged that “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device.”

“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” he continued. “That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE!”

During an Oct. 7 interview with right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Hegseth said, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

Last week, Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on whether the execution would be livestreamed and told reporters he would not be watching it.

Some survivors of Hasan’s attack expressed reservations about the execution being livestreamed. Alonzo Lunsford, whom Hasan shot seven times — including in the head and in the stomach — recently told ABC News that while he supported the method of Hasan’s execution and planned to be present for it, he had reservations about it being livestreamed.

“I don’t want this to be viewed upon as a spectacle, like a pay-per-view event, or like going to a basketball tournament,” he said.

Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers condemned the plan to livestream Hasan’s execution.

“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do,” Rep. Austin Scott, a Republican who represents Georgia, wrote on X on Oct. 9. “America is better than that.”

Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington criticized the decision.

“Calling for a livestream of the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is disturbing and makes a mockery of our legal system,” he said in a statement on Oct. 8. “There is a reason why we treat the meting out of justice with the seriousness it demands. We are a democratic country and should take the rule of law seriously, not turn it into a spectacle.”

Both lawmakers are on the House Armed Services Committee.

Hasan’s execution would be the first carried out by the U.S. military since 1961 and its first by firing squad since 1945. He called the shooting an act of jihad and said he carried out the attack because of his opposition to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.