Donald Trump has backed plans for a public, live-streamed execution in the United States, but deputy JD Vance says he would not watch it.
The US President was asked by reporters if he approved of the spectacle, announced by his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Thursday. "Did I approve?" Trump said leaving the White House for a rally in New York State on Friday evening. "Absolutely I approved."
Vance questions whether execution will happen
Meanwhile, Vance questioned whether the public execution of Nidal Hasan, a former army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people at a base in 2009, would actually go ahead. "I see these announcements," Vance said on Friday. "I don't know that that's actually going to happen."
He added, "Now, that said, I mean, look, if it's through livestream, I'm not going to be watching it."
First public execution since 1936
Hasan is set to be put to death by firing squad on December 3, the first time that method of execution has been used by the US military since World War II. If his live-streamed execution goes ahead, it would be the first public execution in America since 1936, the first carried out by the military since the Civil War and the first to be broadcast in US history.
The United Nations human rights committee have suggested the plan would break the global ban on torture.
Vance highlights Hasan's crimes
Vance suggested the method of Hasan's execution was distracting from his crimes. Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood, he said, in a bid to spark a jihad - a holy war - in retaliation for US military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"This is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11," he said. "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. So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don't forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people."
Announcing the plans on Thursday, Hegseth said it was a "no brainer". "It hadn't been since World War II since we've done that," he said of execution by firing squad. "Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win."
Hegseth argued making the execution public would act as a deterrent, and show prospective jihadi terrorists that crime has consequences.
