Trump says Pence ‘wants to hang all gay people’
Magazine profile also claims President said he got the job because ‘he looks like a vice president’
PRESIDENT Donald Trump mocked his vice president’s religious beliefs and social conservatism, jokingly telling a legal scholar during a White House discussion on gay rights that Mike Pence “wants to hang them all”.
A profile of Pence published yesterday in The New Yorker magazine paints a picture of a calculating and extremely conservative politician backed by a powerful network of donors, who would likely take America even further to the Right than Mr Trump were he to become president.
Yesterday Mr Trump was at pains to put on a show of unity with the “establishment” wing of the Republican Party, which Mr Pence represents. The President had lunch with Mitch Mcconnell, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, and then professed himself to be “closer than ever before” to him.
Mr Pence, 58, was described by Joel Goldstein, an historian and an expert on vice presidents, as becoming the “Sycophant-in-chief ”.
However, Mr Trump was reported by The New Yorker to be openly mocking of Mr Pence’s beliefs.
A staff member from Mr Trump’s campaign said that when people met with Mr Trump after stopping by Mr Pence’s office, Mr Trump would ask them: “Did Mike make you pray?”
The President turned on Mr Pence during a meeting with a legal scholar over abortion, after the scholar said that states would likely legalise abortion on their own if it was overturned on a federal level. “You see?” Mr Trump reportedly asked Mr Pence. “You’ve wasted all this time and energy, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.”
Two sources said that when the conversation turned to gay rights, Mr Trump motioned toward Mr Pence and joked: “Don’t ask that guy – he wants to hang them all!”
The staunchly conservative former governor of Indiana, Mr Pence was never a natural ally of Mr Trump’s.
“He was as far-right as you could go without falling off the Earth,” said Mike Lofgren, a former Republican congressional staff member. Mr Pence’s first meeting with Mr Trump, in 2011, had not been a success.
“The coarse New York billionaire and the prim Indiana evangelical appeared to be on different wavelengths,” the magazine said.
The New Yorker reports in detail how Mr Trump, until the very last minute wanted Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, as his vice president but was persuaded by aides, including Jared Kushner, to opt for Mr Pence.
“They’re telling me I have to pick him,” Mr Trump reportedly told Mr Christie. “It’s central casting. He looks like a vice president.”
Alyssa Farah, Mr Pence’s press secretary, said: “The New Yorker piece is filled with unsubstantiated, unsourced claims that are untrue and offensive. Articles like this are why the American people have lost so much faith in the press.”
Mr Pence has since orchestrated Bible study sessions for Cabinet members in the White House.
The meetings are led by Ralph Drollinger, an evangelical pastor who describes Catholicism as “a false religion,” calls homosexuality “a sin,” and believes that a wife must “submit” to her husband.