Trump says he approves livestream of Nidal Hasan's public execution

US President Donald Trump says he personally endorses the Pentagon's decision to livestream the upcoming firing squad execution of the man responsible for the deadliest attack on military personnel on American soil.

US Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan has been on military death row since being convicted of fatally shooting 13 unarmed soldiers and injuring more than 30 others at Texas' Ford Hood base in 2009.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth noted on Thursday the public will be able to watch Hasan die by firing squad via live broadcast. He said it will take place on December 3 at exactly 1:30pm, the same time when Hasan opened fire in the rampage.

Speaking to reporters on his way to a campaign event in Syracuse, New York, US President Donald Trump, a longtime supporter of capital punishment, says he approves the execution method.

"Well they're making a determination about that, but he will be killed. He will be through a firing squad. He killed 13, 14 people, badly wounded 20-some-odd people, and he's totally nuts. So, I really don't care how he goes, as long as he goes. And I think that the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him."

(Reporter: Did you personally authorise or approve the execution, the live-stream execution of the Fort Hood?)

Trump says: "Did I approve? Absolutely, I approved."

Now that much of the details of the plan remains uncertain, Vice President JD Vance casts doubts on whether the Pentagon will publicly show Hasan's execution. Vance declares he's not going to be watching the livestream but adds Hasan's brutal killings of innocent people should not be forgotten.

If the plan does come to pass, it would be the country's first public execution in nearly a century.

Jeffrey Collins from the Associated Press says: "All states have executions privately, they don't have them in the public, so there's a very limited amount of people that ever seen an execution. The last public execution in the United States was about 90 years ago and it became a spectacle...and at that point, it was determined that just it was better to have executions in private."

He says: "All the way through the World War II era, all the way up till now in what is considered the modern era of the death penalty after the Supreme Court allowed it to be reinstated in the 1970s. So this will be something that's never happened in the United States in almost anyone's memories."

Lawmakers from both parties have implored the Pentagon to reverse course, with many calling a livestream of public execution "gruesome" and beyond "disgusting." Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah points out it risks "feeding that appetite" for corrosive entertainment.