Vice President JD Vance said he will not watch a planned live stream of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan’s execution and doubts the broadcast will happen at all.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Vance drew a clear line on the Pentagon’s plan to stream the December 3 firing-squad execution of the man who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009.
The comments came days after the Pentagon announced the public stream and after President Donald Trump approved the sentence. Vance, a Catholic who has said he supports the death penalty, made plain he would not tune in.
Breitbart News reported Vance’s remarks, captured on C-SPAN footage as he faced questions about the planned broadcast.
“If it’s ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” Vance said.
"If it’s ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it,"
He added that he was not convinced the stream would occur.
"I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,"
“Let’s sort of see,” he said.
Reporters asked how he squared his faith with the decision to stream the killing. Vance pointed back to the crime itself, noting that Hasan brutally murdered innocent people.
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, opened fire at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood in 2009 while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” He was convicted in 2013 of killing 13 people.
The execution is set for December 3 at 1:00 p.m., the same hour as the original attack. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, it would be the first United States military execution since 1961.
Trump this week approved the death sentence and defended it Friday at a Columbus Day event.
"We’re giving a man the death penalty... through firing squad, and he deserves it,"
The president’s decision keeps the focus on justice for the victims and the families who have waited more than a decade. Vance’s own national profile has drawn steady attention in recent months, including signals around a possible 2028 bid.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told Real America’s Voice the execution would be streamed so the public could see it.
"We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it’s public,"
Hegseth said the point was deterrence.
"Because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things."
That framing puts the emphasis on accountability for terrorism on a military installation, not on spectacle for its own sake. The Trump-Vance partnership on security questions has surfaced before, including when Trump moved faster than Vance on an overseas attack attribution.
The United Nations and Amnesty International condemned the plan. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called it “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” Hillary Clinton labeled the idea “barbaric.”
Those objections treat a lawful sentence for mass murder as the outrage, rather than the 2009 slaughter of service members and civilians. Vance has continued to press policy fights inside the administration, including when he froze major tech firms out of a green-card path over visa abuse.
Meta has barred live-streamed capital punishment on Facebook and Instagram since 2019 and did not answer questions about how it would treat any footage. A TikTok spokesperson pointed to a policy against depicting the moment of death. YouTube and X did not answer questions about the footage.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, pressed Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” over whether the commission would permit a broadcast, said the matter sits outside his agency.
"Ultimately, we’re going to defer to Secretary Hegseth and his decisions on how to move forward with this."
Carr’s answer leaves the operational choice with the Pentagon and the White House that already approved the sentence. Political chatter around Vance’s future has included everything from ticket speculation to Senate friction, with names already floated for a possible 2028 ticket.
Vance’s refusal to watch does not undo the conviction, the presidential approval, or the fact that Hasan remains the man who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood. It simply declines the optional seat in front of the screen.
Justice for the dead does not require a live audience at home. It requires the sentence the law already delivered.
