Vance Breaks With The Pentagon On Livestreaming A Firing Squad

The Vice-President doubts the December execution of the Fort Hood attacker will happen as announced — and neither Meta, TikTok nor YouTube has agreed to carry it.

The Vice-President’s public wobble

JD Vance has thrown doubt on one of the Pentagon’s most closely watched announcements, telling reporters on Friday he did not know whether the December firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan would proceed as advertised. “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” he said — then drew his own line: “If it’s through livestream, I’m not going to be watching it.”

Asked how his Catholic faith shaped his stance, Mr Vance declined the direct answer, pivoting instead to the crime: Hasan was an Army psychiatrist “meant to treat soldiers for mental illness” who “took them at their most vulnerable and gunned down these people where they lived.” He called Fort Hood “the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11.”

Hours later, President Trump reasserted the plan. He “absolutely” approved the livestream, while conceding the Pentagon was still “making a determination” on it. On the risk of the footage becoming terrorist propaganda, he was blunt: “I really don’t care how he goes, as long as he goes, and I think that the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”

What was announced

The Pentagon said this week it would execute Hasan, a former US Army major, on 3 December by firing squad — the first military execution in more than 60 years. Hasan killed 13 unarmed soldiers and injured 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, opening fire in a medical building where deploying troops awaited check-ups. He admitted the shootings at his 2013 court-martial, saying he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban.

On Thursday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth added the livestream element: “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” He did not say where or how the video would be shown.

Bipartisan backlash

Republican Senator John Curtis invoked Rome’s “bloody spectacle,” warning civilisations erode “when it cultivates an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment.” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy called it “disgusting” and IS-reminiscent. Republican Representative Austin Scott backs the sentence but said livestreaming “is what jihadists do. America is better than that.” John Bolton read it as performance: “a mark by Secretary Hegseth doing something he thinks will please President Trump.” The US Conference of Catholic Bishops said it was shocked and “greatly sorrow[ful]”; the UN human rights office said a broadcast would be “tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.”

The distribution problem

Vance’s scepticism may be procedural, not just moral. Military law requires presidential approval and completed appellate review before a service execution can proceed — a gate no announcement clears by itself.

Then there is the plumbing. The White House did not say which channel would carry the signal, but Meta explicitly bans livestreams of capital punishment; YouTube bars “violent or gory content intended to shock or disgust”; TikTok bars the “moment of someone’s death.” YouTube and TikTok allow public-interest exceptions, yet a TikTok spokeswoman deflected: “I’d point you back to the not allowed section which reflects our approach.” Meta, YouTube and X did not respond to BBC enquiries.

Amnesty International recorded more than 2,700 executions across 17 countries last year — public executions in only two: 11 in Iran in 2025 and six in Afghanistan.