Vice President JD Vance says he will not watch the live-streamed execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan and doubts the broadcast will happen at all.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Vance drew a hard line on the planned public feed of Hasan’s firing-squad death and questioned whether the stream would materialize. Breitbart reported his remarks as captured on C-SPAN.
The comments came days after the Pentagon said Hasan’s December 3 execution would be streamed for the public, a move framed by top officials as a warning, and by critics as a spectacle.
“If it’s ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” Vance said. “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen. Let’s sort of see.”
"If it’s ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it,"
He is a Catholic who has said he supports the death penalty. Asked how that faith squared with streaming a killing, he pointed back to what Hasan did: he “brutally murdered” innocent people.
Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, opened fire at Fort Hood in 2009 while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” He was convicted in 2013 of killing 13 people at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center.
The planned execution is set for 1:00 p.m. on December 3, the same hour he began the attack. The method is a firing squad. President Donald Trump approved the execution this week.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, it would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961.
The Washington Examiner noted Vance made the remarks while voting early in Cincinnati and cast open doubt on whether the livestream would proceed, even as other administration voices backed a public reckoning.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told Real America’s Voice the execution would be streamed on purpose.
"We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it’s public,"
“Because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” he said.
Trump defended the death sentence Friday at a Columbus Day event. “We’re giving a man the death penalty... through firing squad, and he deserves it,” the president said.
Later, the New York Post reported Trump clarifying he was not involved in the livestream decision itself. “They want to do that because they want to set an example. I wasn’t involved in that decision, but I understand the decision,” he told CNY Central. Asked if he approved the execution, he answered: “I did.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, pressed on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” about 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 said.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the stream “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” Hillary Clinton called the idea “barbaric.” The United Nations and Amnesty International condemned the plan.
Platform rules may matter as much as politics. Meta has barred live-streamed capital punishment on Facebook and Instagram since 2019 and did not answer questions about the footage. A TikTok spokesperson pointed to a policy against depicting the moment of death. YouTube and X did not answer questions about how they would treat it.
Those objections treat a lawful sentence for mass murder as the scandal. The 13 dead at Fort Hood do not get a veto over the outrage cycle.
Not everyone wants a camera. Some want a seat in the room.
Fox News reported that Alonzo Lunsford, shot seven times in the 2009 massacre, plans to witness the December 3 execution. Hasan’s attack killed 13 and wounded 32. Lunsford has forgiven Hasan and still insists on punishment. He intends to look him in the eyes.
"Dude, you failed."
“It’s not a spectacle. There’s nothing glorified in the smell of human flesh, blood and gunpowder,” Lunsford said. He warned Americans treating the execution like entertainment that the reality is not a show.
Livestream talk has drawn bipartisan pushback and national-security worries about jihadist propaganda. Lunsford’s answer is simpler: show up, face the man, and close the account without turning it into content.
Vance did not quit on the sentence. He quit on the viewing party.
He supports capital punishment. He will not sit through a live feed if one appears. He also doubts the logistics will hold. That is a personal boundary, not a reprieve for a terrorist convicted of murdering 13 people in uniform’s path.
Hasan chose the attack. A court chose the conviction. The president approved the execution. Whether the country watches on a screen is a separate fight from whether the sentence is carried out.
Thirteen Americans were murdered at Fort Hood. They are owed a completed sentence, not a seminar on taste from people who never took the bullets.
