The Commander in Chief streameth, and the Commander in Chief streameth not.
Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth had originally planned to live-stream the execution of the traitor Nidal Hasan, who massacred 13 unarmed soldiers and wounded dozens more at Fort Hood in 2009. It has taken seventeen years to finally prosecute Hasan's death warrant for this terror attack in sympathy with enemies of the US while serving as an officer in the US Army. The execution will take place at Fort Hood on December 3 at 1 PM ET.
The death sentence has been surprisingly uncontroversial, at least so far, but the same cannot be said for the idea of streaming it live. The negative reaction to the idea has been bipartisan, although some have publicly argued for its necessity in an era of terrorism. A few minutes ago, however, Trump canceled the show but not the execution in a post on Truth Social:
Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major turned traitor, is a very bad and evil man, who killed 13 people, including a pregnant soldier, who died, along with her unborn son, and injured, very seriously, 32 more innocent people. Barack Hussein Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intercepted electronic communications between Hasan and the radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. When reviewed by his FBI terrorism task force, investigators concluded that Hasan's emails were not a threat. This assessment of the Obama Administration’s actions was later considered to be a key intelligence failure.
With all of that being said, I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, 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. 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! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Trump's complaints about the Obama administration's handling of Hasan are well founded. One reason this execution took as long as it did is that Obama and his team insisted that it was an act of "workplace violence" rather than terrorism. That forced the Department of Defense to withhold Purple Hearts and financial resources to the victims and their families, even with the evidence of communication with the known terror organizer Al-Awlaki. The presiding judge at Hasan's trial blocked prosecutors from airing the "jihad" motive at the time, too. Even after the DoD relented and awarded Purple Hearts for combat casualties, they still withheld other benefits for years until Trump reversed these policies in his first term.
Obama and his team invested themselves heavily in the idea that this was just a random dude going postal, not a terrorist attack by a known wolf that his administration should have prevented. To this day, that narrative still competes with the obvious truth.
That may be why Trump has changed his mind on live-streaming the execution. The real narrative here should be that the US is executing a traitor and terrorist who conducted a cowardly attack on disarmed comrades in support of al-Qaeda. Live-streaming the execution transforms the story in a way that makes Hasan a sympathetic figure in a bloodthirsty performance. Not only is that what Hasan likely hopes to get, but the spectacle also distracts from his evil and traitorous acts and the necessity of military treatment of traitors in its ranks.
This is a wise choice. The only quibble I have now is that the firing squad is the honorable option for military executions. The proper choice for traitors and terrorists is hanging rather than the firing squad. However, let's not allow that quibble to dampen the justice that Hasan will finally receive on December 3.
Editor's Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.
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