A piece in The New Yorker published Monday says President Trump once joked about Vice President Mike Pence wanting to "hang" all gay people.

“Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!”
The anecdote, in the new profile of Pence by Jane Mayer, is an account of a meeting with a legal scholar, in which Trump supposedly made the comment about the vice president's thoughts on LGBT rights.
Two unnamed sources told The New Yorker that Trump jabbed at Pence for his stance on both abortion and gay rights in that meeting.
According to the piece, Trump "belittled" Pence's "determination to overturn Roe v. Wade" — the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
After the scholar explained that states might go ahead and legalize abortion independently if the Supreme Court were to overturn the decision, the president then remarked to Pence that he was wasting his time.
“You see? You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway," Trump reportedly said to him.
After the conversation shifted to gay rights, Trump, according to the piece, gestured to Pence and said: “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!”
The vice president's office did not immediately return request for comment, but Alyssa Farah, a spokesperson for Pence, pushed back on the piece in a statement to The Indianapolis Star.
“Articles like this are why the American people have lost so much faith in the press," Farah said. "The New Yorker piece is filled with unsubstantiated, unsourced claims that are untrue and offensive."
Remy Smidt is a reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Remy Smidt at remy.smidt@buzzfeed.com.
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