Vance Distancing Himself From Pentagon's Planned Public Firing Squad Execution

US Vice President JD Vance is distancing himself from the Pentagon’s plans to livestream the firing squad execution of a man responsible for killing 13 in a 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood in Texas.

“I’ve seen those announcements,” he told reporters on Friday. “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen.”  

“If it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” he continued.

Vance’s remarks come a day after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s shocking announcement that the execution of former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, scheduled for Dec. 3, will be made publicly available online. It will be the first time the Army has carried out the death penalty since 1961. 

“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,” Hegseth told MAGA influencer and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The Pentagon later confirmed the plans to livestream the killing.

Vance added on Friday: “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.”

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, opened fire with a handgun inside a medical building where soldiers were getting medical checkups.He represented himself at trial, declaring he’d switched sides in the “war on Islam.”

“What I try to remind people is this is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11,” 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 those people where they live,” he continued. 

President Donald Trump earlier this month approved the Pentagon’s rare plan to execute Hasan by firing squad. Trump, shortly after returning to office, signed an executive order calling for the dramatic expansion of the use of the federal death penalty after overseeing an execution spree during his first term. 

Hegseth said Hasan will be put to death at Fort Hood at 1 p.m. on a Thursday because that’s when he carried out his attack.

“No-brainer,” Hegseth said. “Execution by firing squad. Army major betrays his country, radical Islamist, kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood ― of course we’re going to do it at Fort Hood.”

Vance, who is Catholic, made his comments just hours after Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemned the Pentagon’s plans in a statement on Friday. 

“Our God is the God of life,” Coakley wrote. “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.”

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