Trump Reportedly Joked That Mike Pence 'Wants to Hang All Gay People'

U.S. President Donald Trump joked that Vice President Mike Pence, a devout Christian conservative, “wants to hang” all gay people, the New Yorker reported Monday.

In a long-form profile of the vice president titled "The Danger of President Pence," Jane Mayer paints a picture of Trump routinely mocking Pence for his religious views and socially conservative policies. A Trump campaign staffer told Mayer that Trump would joke with people leaving meetings with Pence, “Did Mike make you pray?"

“You see? You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway,” Mayer reported Trump saying to Pence via staffers and insiders present for interactions between the two leaders.

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When a meeting with a legal scholar about Roe v Wade turned to gay rights, Trump reportedly pointed to Pence and joked, “Don’t ask that guy, he wants to hang them all!”

Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon also spoke to the New Yorker for the profile and threw some shade at Pence. “I’m concerned he’d be a president that the Kochs would own,” said Bannon.

“If Pence were to become president for any reason, the government would be run by the Koch brothers – period. He’s been their tool for years,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a senior Democrat senator.