The White House on Tuesday rebuked portions of a New Yorker profile of Vice President Mike Pence — including an anecdote President Donald Trump once joked Pence "wants to hang" gay people, Politico reported.
According to the New Yorker piece, the president mocked Pence behind his back for his religious beliefs and asked people who met with him if Pence made them pray.
It also reported that during a meeting about gay rights, Trump told a visitor not to bother asking Pence's opinion because "He wants to hang them all."
"From start to finish the article relied on fiction rather than facts," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement to Politico.
"The president has the highest level of respect for the vice president, and for his deeply held faith. The suggestion that he would make such outrageous remarks is offensive and untrue. The anecdote was meant to divide, not unite and is completely false."
The New Yorker, in an email, said it stands by its reporting, and asserted Pence's press office "declined to participate in this story for months, after multiple requests for interviews, comment, and fact-checking," Politico reported.
The statement also asserted it talked to "more than sixty people" to confirm its reporting, including "multiple people who were in the room when President Trump joked that Vice-President Pence 'wants to hang' gay people. We stand by the story."
Pence's office put out a statement of its own criticizing the story.
"Articles like this are why the American people have lost so much faith in the press," Pence's press secretary, Alyssa Farah, said in a statement. "The New Yorker piece is filled with unsubstantiated, unsourced claims that are untrue and offensive."
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