Vice President JD Vance said he will not watch Nidal Hasan’s planned live-streamed execution and doubts it will happen, as critics call the Pentagon plan barbaric.

Vice President JD Vance told reporters Friday he has no intention of watching the scheduled live stream of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan’s execution and questioned whether the broadcast will take place at all.

“If it’s ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” Vance said, according to Breitbart coverage of his remarks captured on C-SPAN. “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen. Let’s sort of see.”

The comments came as the Pentagon prepared to carry out Hasan’s death sentence by firing squad on December 3 at 1:00 p.m., the same hour he opened fire in 2009. Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” He was convicted in 2013. The Death Penalty Information Center notes the sentence would mark the first U.S. military execution since 1961.

President Donald Trump approved the execution this week and defended the decision Friday at a Columbus Day event.

"We’re giving a man the death penalty... through firing squad, and he deserves it,"

Trump said. Vance, a Catholic who has said he supports the death penalty, described Hasan as someone who “brutally murdered” innocent people when asked how he reconciled his faith with the planned stream.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been clear about the public nature of the event. Speaking to Real America’s Voice, Hegseth framed the decision as a deliberate warning.

"We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it’s public,"

Hegseth said. “Because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Friday the matter falls outside his agency’s lane. Pressed on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Carr stated the commission would step back.

"Ultimately, we’re going to defer to Secretary Hegseth and his decisions on how to move forward with this."

Platforms and critics push back on the public stream

Major platforms have not embraced the idea. Meta has barred live-streamed capital punishment on Facebook and Instagram since 2019 and did not answer questions about the Hasan footage. A TikTok spokesperson pointed to the company’s policy against depicting the moment of death. YouTube and X also declined to answer questions about how they would handle any stream.

International and domestic voices condemned the plan. The United Nations and Amnesty International both objected. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called it “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” Hillary Clinton labeled the idea “barbaric.”

Vance has spoken publicly in recent months about the place of faith in public life, including in a wide-ranging faith interview that touched on moral questions facing believers in office.

The core facts remain straightforward. Hasan murdered 13 people in a jihadist attack on a military base. A military court convicted him. The president approved the sentence. The Pentagon set a date and method. Hegseth wants the public to see the consequence.

That stance sits alongside Vance’s own record of arguing that Christians should not wall off their beliefs from politics, a theme he returned to when he said the devil tricks believers into silence on hard questions.

Accountability after sixteen years

Sixteen years separate the Fort Hood attack from the scheduled execution. Families of the dead have waited through appeals and delays while Hasan remained a convicted mass killer under military custody. Trump’s approval and Hegseth’s public-stream directive treat the sentence as a completed legal process rather than an endless debate.

Vance’s refusal to watch does not equal opposition to the penalty itself. He supports capital punishment and called the murders brutal. His skepticism about the live stream simply separates the justice of the sentence from the decision to turn it into a broadcast event.

In his vice-presidential role Vance has also driven concrete policy, including the Labor Department move to suspend certain IT outsourcers from the green-card program.

The December 3 date is set. The method is firing squad. The hour matches the original attack. Whether cameras roll remains the open question Vance flagged. Meta’s long-standing ban and TikTok’s death-moment rule already limit how far any stream could travel on the largest platforms.

Critics will keep calling the plan barbaric. Supporters will keep pointing to the 13 dead and the need for final accountability. Vance has drawn his own line: the sentence can proceed without him as a viewer.

Voters continue to hear Vance urge Republicans to hold the line in tough cycles, as when he pressed the GOP base to stay focused amid warning signs in prediction markets.

Justice for the Fort Hood dead does not require a live audience. It requires the sentence the law already imposed.