JD Vance said he would not watch the livestreamed execution of a former soldier by firing squad as the Pentagon’s plan to broadcast the event exposes a schism in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
The US vice-president also cast doubt on whether the livestream, which the Pentagon has scheduled for December 3, would take place at all.
“If it’s all through livestream, I’m not going to be watching it,” Vance said in Ohio on Friday.
Vance, who is Catholic, had been asked about how he squares his faith with the Pentagon’s plans to publicly execute Nidal Malik Hasan, a former US Army major and military psychiatrist who killed 13 and injured 32 in a mass shooting at Texas’s Fort Hood in 2009.
“I see these announcements. I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” Vance added.
Trump on Friday said he supported the execution of Hasan, but it was unclear whether he had approved of the plan to livestream it.
“I’m going to make a determination about [the livestream], but he will be killed. He will be through firing squad,” Trump said while departing the White House.
Asked whether he personally authorised the decision to livestream the execution, he responded: “Did I approve? Absolutely.”
Amid his Iran war, Trump has previously criticised the Islamic republic’s public executions.
The defence department’s plan to broadcast the execution live sparked condemnation from Republicans, Democrats and former top military brass, including some who support the death penalty and its use against Hasan.
“Public executions are something that terrible regimes in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea practise,” said James Stavridis, a retired navy admiral.
While Stavridis said he supported capital punishment, he added: “I do not believe our soldiers should be livestreamed conducting an execution publicly. It is not who we are as a military or a nation.”
Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, cited the ancient Roman philosopher when he said: “Seneca warned that Rome’s bloody spectacles corrupted the people who watched them. A civilisation erodes when it cultivates an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment.”
Curtis said defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the Fort Hood execution “risks feeding that appetite”, he added. “I urge him to reconsider.”
Alaska’s Republican senator Lisa Murkowski also condemned the Pentagon’s plan regarding Hasan, who is paralysed from the waist down after law enforcement officers shot him during his attack.
“I would expect this from terrorists and dictators, but not here in America. It would give this individual, who deserves no further notoriety, the martyrdom he seeks,” she posted on X.
The emerging split among Republicans comes less than a month before crucial midterm elections as the party fights to keep its grip on Congress.
Republican Congress member Austin Scott of Georgia, who sits on the House intelligence committee, said he supported the death sentence for Hasan, “but livestreaming executions is what jihadists do”.
Outgoing senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, an outspoken critic of Trump and Hegseth, said: “Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting.”
Former Trump administration official Joe Kent, who directed the National Counterterrorism Center, said in a post on X that broadcasting the execution “is beneath the dignity & decency of our nation”, stained its morality and “gives the terrorists free propaganda that they will use to radicalize & recruit more terrorists like Hassan”.
Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate foreign relations committee, called for Hegseth’s ousting over the plan.
“Livestreaming an execution is an abhorrent act straight from the playbook of our adversaries, like Iran and the Taliban,” she said. “Pete Hegseth is a stain on our nation and needs to go.”
But some prominent conservatives backed Hegseth’s plan.
Katie Miller, who is married to top White House official Stephen Miller, said that because “Charlie Kirk was murdered for all to see . . . we should all see accountability when it finally comes”.
Rightwing influencer Laura Loomer, who is close to Trump, wondered why Vance would not want to watch the livestream.
“Watching the execution of a jihadist who killed American soldiers is peak patriotism,” she said.