Donald Trump is mulling whether to allow the U.S. military to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan and reportedly asking his advisers whether he should go along with the plan.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants the public to watch the killing of Hasan, who killed 13 people and injured 32 others at the Fort Hood military base in 2009. Hegseth wants to “make sure” anyone can see it, and a self-described Christian nationalist pastor who leads the controversial church Hegseth attends has endorsed the idea.

One of the president’s spiritual advisers also supports Hegseth’s plan — and claims that God commands it.

“I support the Pentagon’s decision to livestream the execution of mass-murderer Nidal Hasan,” said Rev. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church Dallas and a longtime informal adviser to the president.

“Capital punishment is commanded by God in Genesis 9:6 to remind people of the sanctity of human life,” he added. “The more people that can see that truth illustrated through a public execution, the better.”

He told The Dallas Morning News that he would watch Hasan’s killing.

Jeffress also claimed that God’s first law to the biblical figure Noah was “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed.”

“God was saying life is so sacred, it is a gift from me, that anyone who takes it needs to suffer the ultimate penalty,” he told the newspaper. “Capital punishment for society isn’t God’s suggestion; it’s God’s command.”

He also claimed that a live-streamed broadcast of the execution complies with Christian scripture.

“Since God gave capital punishment to be an object lesson for society to teach them the sanctity of life, it would follow that the more people who see it, the better it is,” he said.

Trump also posted Jeffress’s statements to The Dallas Morning News on his Truth Social, and Jeffress thanked the president for the post.

Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the late Billy Graham and a leading evangelical figure close to the Trump administration, also did not condemn Hegseth’s announcement and instead compared the live-streamed state-sanctioned killing to Hollywood depictions of violence.

He said there are a “lot of strong opinions” and doesn’t know “where that debate will land.”

“I found it ironic that many who embrace Hollywood and its culture of death that is constantly depicting murders, rapes, and all kinds of violence — all in the name of entertainment — are saying they’re so appalled at this,” he wrote on Facebook. “Have we become desensitized to death? What are your thoughts?”

But other prominent faith leaders and advocates for abolishing the death penalty have roundly rejected Hegseth’s proposal as an act of barbarism that would erode the nation’s moral fabric.

Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, told Religion News Service that while he affirms the “need for justice” regarding Hasan’s crime, “at the same time, a live-streamed execution by firing squad risks turning one of the state’s most solemn responsibilities into a public spectacle, promoting a culture of death, rather than a culture that upholds the dignity of every human being.”

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has condemned the announcement as a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.”

“Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hasan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,” he said in a statement.

Coakley invoked Romans 12:17, writing, “The word of God exhorts us: ‘do not repay anyone evil for evil.’”

“The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people,” he said.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, which advocates for abolishing the death penalty, warned the administration against “falling into the abyss of such a vengeful practice.”

“We undermine our own humanity when we treat another person’s death as something to watch, celebrate, or use for entertainment,” she added. “It is remiscient of the horrors of lynching in our nation’s past, and would be a grotesque display of hatred witnessed in the public executions of some authoritarian countries today.”

Trump and his allies have helped shape a Christian nationalist movement — driven by a belief that Christianity is and should be embedded in all aspects of law and society — into a critical voting bloc, which has spent decades gaining influence in media and in federal, state and local governments.

Hegseth and other administration officials and federal agencies routinely inject Christian messages into their public statements and use their official government social media accounts to share explicitly religious messages, including declaring Jesus the nation’s savior.

Hasan is scheduled to be killed December 3, marking the U.S. military’s first execution by firing squad since 1945, when Army Private Eddie Slovik faced 12 riflemen from his own unit.

At least six soldiers are already looking for a way out of being among the riflemen who will kill Hasan.

Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told The Washington Sun that he talked to six soldiers who are seeking religious exemptions that would prevent them from being selected for the firing squad.

Weinstein said he anticipates up to 180 U.S. service members filing such requests.

Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, said he’s unsure whether the execution will actually be broadcast — and he wouldn’t watch it, anyway.

“I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” Vance said Friday.

“But what I try to remind people is, look, this is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11, the people that he was meant to treat, the Army soldiers that he was meant to treat for mental illness and other problems, he took them at their most vulnerable and gunned down these people where they lived,” he added.

“Now that said, I mean, look, if it’s through livestream, I’m not going to be watching it,” Vance said.

That same day, Trump told reporters he is “going to make a determination about that.”

“But he will be killed,” Trump said. “He will be, through firing squad. … 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.”