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.
Oh, this is genuinely a problem for them. They want to normalize the kind of violence that targets vulnerable groups disproportionately, such as disabled people, but they need a “deserving” victim to remain palletable enough to the liberal masses so that they can gradually normalize this kind of public violence. But, now if they pull out of this after international pressure, it’ll look weak and make it even harder to try again.