HEBRON, Ky. — Vice President JD Vance cast doubt Friday on whether the Pentagon will livestream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan in December but told reporters that if it is livestreamed, "I'm not going to be watching it."
The Republican vice president said, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” when asked about the plans that the Pentagon confirmed Thursday. But Vance then tried to set aside the controversy over the plans for a public execution and said Hasan’s crimes should not be forgotten.
Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting spree at the military base in 2009.
“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” Vance said.
“Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” he added.
Vance is a convert to the Catholic Church, which has long opposed capital punishment.
President Donald Trump had endorsed Hasan's execution by firing squad during a Wednesday political event in Texas, suggesting “he deserves it.”
However, Trump was noncommittal when asked Friday whether he wanted the execution livestreamed. "Well, they’re making a determination about that,” Trump told reporters before traveling to a political event in Syracuse, New York.
But he again endorsed the firing squad as the method.
“He will be killed. He will be, through firing squad,” Trump told reporters. “I really don’t care how he goes, as long as he goes. And I think the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”
Trump did not answer when asked if he would watch a livestreamed execution.
Earlier Friday morning, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the U.S. government’s decision to livestream Hasan's execution.
“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the conference, said in a statement. He added that the decision was “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”
Trump approved the execution by firing squad days after a failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection late last month pushed Tennessee's governor to halt further executions in that state this year.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military hasn’t executed a service member by firing squad since World War II. The last military execution took place on April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging.
From Congress, lawmakers from both parties, Republicans and Democrats, widely condemned what they called the “gruesome” and “disgusting” decision to livestream the execution and implored the Pentagon to reverse course.
“Beyond disgusting,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, the Republican from North Carolina. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”
The lawmakers said the authoritarian-style spectacle would send a message that runs deeply counter to American values and its system of justice, and risks putting U.S. service personnel and others overseas at risk of blowback.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, condemned Hegseth’s plan, saying there’s a reason why “almost no countries in the world engage in this barbaric practice.”
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said how the U.S. carries out its system of justice matters, and urged the Pentagon “to reverse this gruesome decision.”
Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah pointed to Rome’s bloody spectacles of the past said Hegseth’s plan to livestream the execution risks “feeding that appetite” for corrosive entertainment.
“I urge him to reconsider,” Curtis said.
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This story has been corrected to show the military base's name is Fort Hood, not Ford Hood.
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Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
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