Trump says Fort Hood shooter 'deserves' planned firing squad execution

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump publicly endorsed the Pentagon's planned firing squad execution of a gunman who killed 13 soldiers during a 2009 rampage at Fort Hood, but the president did not make clear whether he supports controversial plans to livestream it.

"Death penalty through firing squad, and he deserves it," Trump said of former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as he spoke Oct. 9 at a Christopher Columbus Day White House celebration. "Killed and wounded many, many people. A maniac."

"Did I approve? Absolutely," Trump said later in the day in response to a question from a reporter. But it was unclear whether he meant he approved of the method of the execution or it being livestreamed.

In an early exchange with a different reporter, Trump said "they're making a determination" whether the execution will be livestreamed. "He's totally nuts," Trump said of the gunman, "so I don't really care how he goes, as long as he goes."

The Pentagon announced plans to execute former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad earlier this week. The last time the United States executed a military member via firing squad was on Jan. 31, 1945, when Pvt. Eddie Slovik was executed for desertion, according to The Air Force Times.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Oct. 8 said the execution will be made available for the public to see, drawing criticism from Trump critics for mirroring a practice used in Iran and Afghanistan, countries governed by oppressive regimes. Hegseth said he will be getting a “firing squad of soldiers."

"We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public," Hegseth said in an interview with the conservative outlet Real America’s Voice. "Because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things."

Hasan's execution is set for Dec. 3.

The last documented public execution in the U.S. was in 1936, when about 20,000 people attended the hanging of Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky, according to "American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture," a 2025 book by Sonya Lee.

USA TODAY could find no record of an execution ever being livestreamed by any government in the world. The nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center also could not find one.

"We have no record of any execution being livestreamed," the center's executive director, Robin Maher, told USA TODAY.

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, said he was retaliating for U.S. wars in the Muslim world when he turned his gun on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas on Nov. 5, 2009, killing 13 people and injuring 31 others. He was sentenced to death in 2013 after a court martial.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, in an Oct. 5 statement announcing plans to kill Hasan by firing squad, said Trump approved of the method at the recommendation of Hegseth.

Contributing: Reuters and USA TODAY's Fernando Cervantes Jr., Amanda Lee Myers and James Powel

Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.