Husband of Slain Soldier Confronts Vance on Leadership Failures That Left Her Dead
Joey Amor stood face to face with Vice President JD Vance and refused to let the death of his wife pass as just another cost of war. Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, a Minnesota mother and Army Reserve soldier with more than 20 years of service, was killed by an Iranian drone at Kuwait’s Port Shuaiba on March 1, 2026, one day after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began. She was days from coming home.
Amor did not mince words. “Though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that,” he said. “I believe CBS has reported on that. My wife has told me things before she passed. There are other soldiers that know things that are being quiet about certain aspects of this. There was a failure in the leadership, and I want to know how this administration is going to start holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we honor and that we love.”
Vance met the accusation head-on. He told Amor the country owes his family a debt that cannot be repaid and pledged he would not forget Nicole or the conversation. “When you talk about failures that we were implicated in, the administration, the Department of War, whoever you want to say was implicated in, I want to know about that stuff,” Vance said. “Because if there were failures, and I don’t doubt that there were, this is literally the first time I’ve heard of this, is this conversation, and I want to fix that stuff. I do not want this stuff to happen.”
He acknowledged that cheap, deadly drones have changed the battlefield and said the military has already adjusted tactics to protect troops. But he refused to discuss specifics on camera. “I’m not going to get into the details because God forbid I don’t want the Iranians to learn something else where they’re going to use to target somebody else’s wife or somebody else’s mother.”
Vance promised to meet Amor and the other soldiers offline, away from the broadcast, and to treat every failure with the seriousness it deserves. Amor accepted. “Okay. God bless you.”