Execution UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
President Trump has overruled our offensive Defense Secretary and says there will not be a publicly-broadcast of the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. He still will be shot to death but not with a worldwide audience watching.
While there are some parts of the world that think it’s a mistake not to make the execution public, most not only don’t want the death penalty at all.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports only 17 countries executed people last year, up from a record low fifteen in 2024.
Four countries (Japan, South Sudan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates) resumed executions after a hiatus, while two countries (Oman and Syria) which carried out executions in 2024 did not in 2025. Of note, the United States was the only nation to execute people in the Americas for the 17th consecutive year.
In addition to Iran, which carried out at least 2,159 executions in 2025, significant increases were recorded in several other countries. Saudi Arabia carried out at least 356 executions, exceeding their historic high of 345 executions in 2024. Together, Iran and Saudi Arabia accounted for 93% of all executions worldwide. Egypt (13 to 23), Singapore (9 to 17), Yemen (38 to 51), and the United States (25 to 47) all approximately doubled their prior year execution totals, and Kuwait nearly tripled (6 to 17).
Paralleling global trends, the increase in the United States was attributable to a regional rise in executions in Florida, which accounted for nearly half of all executions. Amnesty International notes that this rise in U.S. executions occurred as “officials at the federal level and in some states promoted inflammatory and flawed narratives on the death penalty and its effect on crime, advocating for an increase in its use.”
Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were global outliers in execution methods with the use of nitrogen gas asphyxiation and beheadings, respectively. As in previous years, the 2025 execution total does not include the thousands of executions estimated to be carried out annually in China, regarded as the world’s leading executioner. Both China and Vietnam classify data on the death penalty as a state secret. Restrictive state practices in North Korea, Laos, and Belarus also result in little to no information being available for those countries.
President Trump maintains Hasan deserves the several bullets that will be coming to him and admits to having some misgivings about cancelling the public event. However,
“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 obsession with blaming President Obama (and his constant cheap shot mentions of his middle name) is well over-stated.
NPR’s Mark Memmott reported in November, 2009:
Author Jerome Corsi, who was among the group that “Swift Boated” Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election and more recently penned The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, has another eye-catching story at the conservative World Net Daily website.
The headline reads: “Shooter Advised Obama Transition; Fort Hood Triggerman Aided Team On Homeland Security Task Force.”
And the story begins with this:
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday’s massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama’s transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.
Here’s what NPR national security/intelligence correspondent Tom Gjelten tells us about Corsi’s conclusion:
This claim is so exaggerated as to be without merit.
Nidal Hasan was one of 308 people whose names appear on a list of “participants” in a series of public roundtable meetings organized by the “Presidential Transition Task Force,” a project of the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University. Hasan was not himself a member of the Task Force.
Frank Cilluffo, the HSPI director, says the participants’ list, published as an appendix to the Task Force report, was no more than a tally of those people who RSVP’d to a notice of the roundtable meetings, which took place between June 2008 and February 2009. “Hasan joined as a member of the audience,” Cilluffo says.
When Cilluffo saw a picture of Hasan, he remembered him making a public comment during one of the roundtable meetings. “I had to cut him off, because he was going on too long,” Cilluffo says. He says he can not recall what Hasan was saying.
Corsi’s report, by the way, does something of a U-turn about midway through. “While the GWU task force participants included several members of government, including representatives of the Department of Justice and the U.S Department of Homeland Security,” he writes, “there is no indication in the document that the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition, other than to serve in a university-based advisory capacity.”
And an “editor’s note” attached to Corsi’s story after its publication says “Hasan is being reported as a participant in the GWU Homeland Security Policy Institute’s Presidential Transition Task Force, not as a member, noting the group was a university think-tank, not part of the Obama administration official transition team.”
So, he begins with a sure-to-shock conclusion — that Hasan played a “homeland security advisory role” in the transition. Then, at a point in the story that many readers won’t reach or hear about, Corsi reverses course.
NPR is not, as we all know, a source of information for our president.
Some cynics might be surprised Trump passed up a golden opportunity to market the Official Donald J. Trump Execution Rifle. As with the Trump Bible, it could be issued in various editions, one of which would be the “Pete Hegseth edition.”
The sad thing is that a lot of people would buy the things. We wonderful if one of the weapons that will be used someday will be on display in the Trump Liebrary and Museum.
At least we are spared the sad spectacle of this event being streamed into our homes and into too many children’s cell phones.