Even Mike Johnson is warning Trump not to livestream execution of Fort Hood attacker

House Speaker Mike Johnson has told the Trump administration he has doubts about its plan to broadcast the firing squad execution of Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan, warning that video of the killing could end up as “a recruiting tool for future terrorists.”

Johnson was asked about the plan by CBS News national correspondent Robert Costa, who noted that Vice President JD Vance had already said he would “not watch it.” The speaker said he hadn’t yet discussed the matter with President Donald Trump, Vance or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who announced last week that the December 3 execution would be public, but that members of his conference had raised objections.

“There are colleagues who have concerns,” Johnson said. The worry, he explained, was that the government would be producing a video that extremists could use as “a recruiting tool for future terrorists,” adding: “You know, we got to think through the policy implications of all that. I wouldn’t be watching it if it was aired.”

“But there’s a lot of opinions on that,” he continued. “I think there’s still some time to talk about that, and my role as the leader of the legislative branch is to share my opinion — and that’s outside of my lane, of course — but I need to tell the White House what some of my colleagues think about that, and that not everybody is in favor of the idea.”

Johnson is the most senior Republican yet to question the broadcast, which has drawn objections from both parties since Hegseth disclosed it on Thursday. Trump said over the weekend that he would make the final call.

Hegseth revealed the plan during an interview with right-wing activist Jack Posobiec, calling Hasan’s execution a “no-brainer.” “He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” 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.”

A Pentagon official later confirmed to The Independent that the execution would be livestreamed. Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests or contacted the administration, Hegseth said: “Don’t care.”

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a death sentence handed down by court-martial cannot be carried out “until approved by the president.” The Pentagon announced last week that Trump had signed off on Hegseth’s recommendation. “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote on X.

Before Johnson’s comments, the White House had declined to say whether Trump supported broadcasting the execution, referring questions to the Pentagon.

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist who held the rank of major, opened fire at the Texas base in November 2009, weeks before he was due to deploy to Afghanistan, killing 13 people and wounding 32. A military jury convicted him of 45 counts of murder and sentenced him to death in 2013.

He was partially paralyzed after police shot him during his arrest. If the execution goes ahead, it will be the first carried out by the U.S. military since April 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged, and the first by military firing squad since January 1945, when 12 riflemen from Private Eddie Slovik’s own unit shot him with M1 Garands.

The Hasan case is part of a wider push by Trump to speed up federal executions and revive older methods. His administration executed 13 people in its first term, the most under any president in more than 120 years, and on his first day back in office he ordered the attorney general to seek the death penalty “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.”

The Justice Department has since told the Bureau of Prisons to consider firing squads and electrocution in addition to lethal injection.