Homeland Security chief defends plan to livestream Fort Hood execution

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended a Pentagon plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army major convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, saying Sunday that he sees no heightened security threat from broadcasting his death. President Donald Trump, however, says he will make the final decision on whether the livestream goes ahead.

“I don’t see an elevated risk at this point at all because of this,” Mullin said on CBS News’ Face the Nation. “I think people need to understand, if you attack America, we will come after you, and we will make sure that the punishment fits the crime.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week that the Pentagon planned to livestream Hasan’s execution by firing squad on Dec. 3. If carried out, it would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961. The proposal has drawn objections from Republican lawmakers who warn that a broadcast could be used to recruit or radicalize people.

Hasan was sentenced to death in 2013 for the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas. Al Jazeera reported that he killed 12 active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman at a medical facility where personnel received checkups before deployment. Another 32 people were injured, according to Al Jazeera. Military police shot Hasan while responding, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, the outlet reported.

Mullin rejected concerns about broadcasting the execution. “No one has to watch it if they don’t choose to,” he said. He said he had “no sympathy” for Hasan and gave “absolutely zero thought to the way that this man dies.”

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina offered a sharply different assessment on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Terrorist organisations will use this as a recruiting tool. It will radicalise other people, and this is not who we are,” he said, according to Al Jazeera. Tillis said Hasan should be executed but called the proposed broadcast improper. He also criticized Hegseth’s leadership.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska urged the Pentagon to reverse what she called a “gruesome decision.” “I would expect this from terrorists and dictators, but not here in America,” she wrote on X. A livestream, she said, would give Hasan “the martyrdom he seeks.” Republican Rep. Tom Barrett of Michigan also urged Hegseth to reconsider, saying, according to Al Jazeera, that making a public spectacle of the execution “does not serve a public interest.”

Vice President JD Vance said Friday that, if the execution is livestreamed, he would not watch it. He urged people not to lose sight of Hasan’s crime, calling the Fort Hood shooting “the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11.”

Trump said Saturday that he had heard arguments for and against a broadcast. Showing it, he suggested, might deter others, but he had not settled the question. “I’ll make a decision, ultimately,” he told reporters. Under military law, a military execution requires presidential approval, according to Al Jazeera.