Hegseth’s livestream execution finds tech fans. Trump not sure after learning shooter was paralyzed
“I have been outspoken on wanting public executions for over a decade.”
So said Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Anduril Industries, a military technology company that sells autonomous drones and software to the Defense Department, Customs and Border Protection, and militaries abroad in a vocal defense of “public and brutal” executions in general, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the execution of Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hasan in particular.
Executions are the “ultimate example of the state’s monopoly on violence,” Luckey wrote in a Sunday night X post, arguing that all executions should be public to discourage the acts in question—and that to “revel in the death of those who truly deserve it…is normal, good, and aligned with our natural and national order.” [Continue reading…]
President Donald Trump and his advisers are debating whether to call off plans to livestream the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter, with Trump having remarked privately that he did not initially know that Nidal Hasan was paralyzed from the waist down, two sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.
The president was not aware that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was announcing last week that the administration planned to let the public watch the execution, the sources said, and was not sure what to make of it at first. Trump was, however, firmly behind the decision to execute Hasan via firing squad, multiple officials told CNN, and he’s often defended it in public.
And even after Hegseth posted on X on Thursday confirming that the Pentagon planned to livestream the execution, Trump polled several of his advisers and allies about how to proceed.
It was during the those conversations that Trump learned Hasan was paralyzed from the waist down — he was shot in the back by law enforcement during the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood — and that he now uses a wheelchair, the sources said, which made showing the execution publicly less palatable to the president. [Continue reading…]