The Pentagon wants to put a human being in front of a firing squad on December 3 and stream it to the public, a first in American history. The vice president's response, when asked about it, was basically "I don't know that that's actually going to happen," which is not what you say about a plan your own administration is proud of.
A Firing Squad, Now in High Definition
Here are the facts, and they're strange enough without help. Earlier this week the Pentagon announced it would execute Nidal Hasan by firing squad. Hasan is the former Army major who killed 13 unarmed soldiers and wounded 32 more at Fort Hood in 2009. A military execution by firing squad would be the first of its kind since the end of World War Two. The first military execution of any kind in more than 60 years.
Then came Thursday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the execution would be livestreamed for the public. "People need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things," he said.
Note what he said. Not "justice will be served." Not "the victims' families deserve closure." Consequences. People need to understand. It's a message, and the medium is a live broadcast of a man being shot to death by his own country's military.
Vance Takes a Giant Step Backward
On Friday, reporters asked Vice President JD Vance how he squares his Christian faith with the Pentagon broadcasting an execution. It's a fair question, and he did not enjoy it.
His answer opened with distance. "I see these announcements. I don't know that that's actually going to happen." Think about that. The second-highest official in the executive branch is watching the Defense Secretary make a major announcement and responding like a guy at a party who's just been told his friend plans to propose to a stranger. Maybe. We'll see. Probably not my problem.
He also said that if the stream does happen, he won't be watching it. Then he pivoted to the thing he clearly preferred to discuss: Hasan was, in Vance's view, responsible for "the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11," and people shouldn't forget he "brutally murdered a lot of innocent people." Nobody is forgetting that. That's not the controversy. The controversy is the pay-per-view.
The Coalition Nobody Expected
Hegseth has managed something truly rare in modern American politics. He has united opposition across party lines, the Catholic Church, and the United Nations in a single week.
Republican Senator John Curtis reached all the way back to ancient Rome, warning that the "bloody spectacle" of public killings corrupted the people who watched. Public executions, he said, erode civilizations "when it cultivates an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment." Hegseth's plan, Curtis said, "risks feeding that appetite." He urged the Pentagon to reconsider and added that "broadcasting a death diminishes us and is not an effective deterrent."
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told CNN the idea was "disgusting" and reminiscent of executions carried out by the Islamic State group. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed "shock and great sorrow." The UN human rights office told AFP that livestreaming it would be "tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture."
Even the Survivors Are Squeamish
You'd think the people with the strongest claim here would be the Fort Hood survivors. One of them has said he supports the firing squad execution itself but questions the livestream.
Sit with that. A man who was shot at that base, who watched his fellow soldiers die, wants the sentence carried out and still doesn't want it broadcast. If the justification for the stream is to serve the victims, the victims are not exactly lining up to be served.
The BBC has asked the White House whether Trump supports the plan. As of this reporting, we have no answer. That silence matters. Vance's "I don't know that that's actually going to happen" reads a lot like a man who has not been told the plan and would like it noted that he is not the one who came up with it.
Consequences Are Not Content
Let's be clear about what's being proposed. The government would take a legal, solemn, irreversible act and turn it into a show, announced with a date and a link. That's the logic of the thing. A broadcast exists to be watched.
The stated purpose is deterrence, the idea that people should see what happens. But Curtis, a Republican who presumably supports the death penalty or he wouldn't be making a Roman Empire argument about it, put it plainly: broadcasting a death is not an effective deterrent. Nobody has offered evidence that it is. What it offers is a spectacle for an audience that Hegseth, apparently, wants to build.
The Dingo Take
Even Vance wouldn't defend it. That's the whole story.
When the vice president of an administration this committed to cruelty as a brand can't bring himself to say the plan is a good idea, the plan has a problem. He didn't say it was justified. He didn't say it was right. He said he wasn't sure it would happen and that he wouldn't watch. That's not a defense. That's a man checking for exits.
Hasan murdered 13 people and the law has sentenced him to die. Fine. That's a matter for the courts, the Army, and the families, carried out with the gravity the act demands. Turning it into a live event doesn't make it more just. It makes it more like the stuff we spent two decades condemning when other people did it. If Hegseth wants consequences, he can have them. He doesn't get an audience.
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