Trump: "I will not broadcast the firing squad live"... Faced with a backlash from public opinion ahead of the midterm elections

(Washington = Yonhap News) Correspondent Park Seong-min = U.S. President Donald Trump announced on the 15th (local time) that he will execute the shooter at a U.S. military base by firing squad, but that the execution will not be broadcast live.

“He will be executed by firing squad as scheduled, but it will not be broadcast live,” President Trump wrote on the social media platform TruthSocial.

He added, "However, the victim's immediate family can directly watch the execution at the scene if they wish. They are entitled to witness the realization of justice."

This decision came immediately after the results of a public opinion poll jointly conducted by the Washington Post (WP), ABC, and public opinion polling agency Ipsos were released, showing that there were overwhelmingly many people opposing the live broadcast.

In this survey, more people were in favor (53%) of executing firing squads than were opposed (42%), but 80% of respondents were against broadcasting the executions live.

Earlier this month, President Trump approved the U.S. military's execution by firing squad of Nidal Malik Hassan (then a major), a Muslim American who was sentenced to death for killing 13 people in a shooting spree at Fort Hood, a U.S. military base in Texas, in 2009.

However, opposition and criticism have been growing in the United States since Minister Hegseth announced that he would broadcast the execution by firing squad live.

In the end, President Trump's decision not to broadcast live is interpreted as a consideration of political backlash with less than 20 days left until the midterm elections.

The Associated Press and AFP news agencies pointed out that President Trump withdrew the live broadcast plan due to bipartisan opposition from the U.S. Congress and criticism from public opinion.

In a post on TruthSocial, President Trump called Hassan a "traitor" and an "evil and vicious" person, pointing out that he killed 13 people, including a pregnant female soldier and her fetus, and seriously injured 32 innocent people.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Barack Hussein Obama intercepted electronic communications between Hassan and the radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Olaqi. Upon review by the FBI's counterterrorism task force, investigators determined that Hassan's emails did not pose a threat,” the statement said. “The Obama administration's assessment of this action was later deemed a major intelligence failure.”

Al-Olaki, who exchanged emails with Hassan, served as the top leader of Al Qaeda's Arabian Peninsula Branch (AQAP), headquartered in Yemen, and was pointed out as the mastermind behind radical ideology in the United States. He was killed in a drone attack by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Yemen in 2011.

“I thought live-streaming the execution could have a powerful deterrent effect by allowing the world to see how America deals with terrorists and scumbags like Hassan,” Trump said.