President Donald Trump told reporters he was going to “make a determination” when asked whether the execution of the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan should be livestreamed.
“I’m going to make a determination about that, but he will be killed,” Trump said on Friday at the White House. “He will be, through firing squad. He killed 13, 14 people, badly wounded 20-some odd people, and he’s totally nuts. So 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.”
In response to another question on whether he would watch it, he said on the South Lawn that Hasan “walked into a room, he started killing everybody.”
“Did you personally authorize or approve the execution, the livestream execution?” another reporter asked.
“Did I approve? Absolutely,” he replied.
It is unclear whether Trump meant he approved of Hasan’s execution, which he did this week, or the Department of War’s decision to livestream it, a decision that has drawn bipartisan scrutiny.
Vice President JD Vance was clearer on Friday morning when he was asked for his reaction to the decision, with the execution scheduled to take place on Dec. 3.
“What I try to remind people is, look, this is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11,” Vance told reporters. “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.”
Vance expressed skepticism that the execution would actually be livestreamed.
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He later added, “Now that said, I mean, look, if it’s through livestream, I’m not going to be watching it.”
War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Thursday that his department would livestream the event because “people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”