New Yorker stands by claim that Trump joked Pence wants to ‘hang all the gays’

In a recent New Yorker profile of Vice President Mike Pence titled The Danger of President Pence, reporter Jane Mayer made a bold claim.

In the extensive piece, Mayer relayed an account of a meeting where Donald Trump ‘jokingly’ said Pence wants to ‘hang all the gays’.

The story and comment quickly became a stand-out pull-quote of the article. Unsurprisingly, the White House denies this ever happened.

‘From start to finish the article relied on fiction rather than facts,’ White House press secretary Sarah Sanders wrote 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 office of Pence also took issue with the article. Pence’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, released a statement about the piece. It said: “Articles like this are why the American people have lost so much faith in the press.”

However, the New Yorker is standing by the entirety of its reporting.

The publication released a statement revealing they spoke to ‘more than sixty people’ to fact-check and confirm the story. This includes “senior White House officials, a senior member of the Vice-President’s office, the RGA, Rep. Elijah Cummings, and multiple people who were in the room when President Trump joked that Vice-President Pence ‘wants to hang’ gay people.”

They concluded with: “We stand by the story.”