Vice President JD Vance said he would not watch a livestream of the planned execution of the 2009 Fort Hood shooter and cast doubt on whether the Pentagon’s plan for a public execution would go forward at all.
“I see these announcements,” Mr. Vance said after casting his ballot for the midterm elections in his home state of Ohio. “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen.”
He continued, “Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s through livestream, I’m not going to be watching it.”
Mr. Vance also suggested that the method of the planned execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others in the deadliest shooting at an American military base, was distracting from the severity of his crimes. Mr. Hasan is set to be executed by firing squad, the first soldier to be put to death by that method since World War II. The firing squad is a rare method of execution, but one that has been historically used by the military, particularly during wartime.
“This is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11,” Mr. Vance said. “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 continued, “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.”
Mr. Vance’s comments struck a markedly different tone from those of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who called the public execution a “no-brainer.”
“It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that,” he told the far-right influencer Jack Posobiec in an interview, apparently referring to the last known military execution by firing squad. “Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win.”
In Congress, Democrats and some G.O.P. lawmakers blasted the plan to stream the execution after Mr. Hegseth and the Pentagon announced it Thursday.
The remarks by Mr. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, came hours after top Catholic leaders in the United States condemned the planned livestream. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the leader of America’s Roman Catholic bishops, said the move was “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”
Mr. Vance has repeatedly clashed over U.S. policy with church leaders, including Pope Leo XIV, who he said earlier this year should stay out of American affairs.
The Catholic Church opposes all capital punishment under the reasoning that all human life is sacred. This “unconditionally pro-life” stance also undergirds the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion, which it views as ending a life.
President Trump is a vocal advocate of the death penalty, and his administration has moved to significantly expand its use. The Pentagon said on Monday that Mr. Trump had approved Major Hasan’s execution.
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