An article published in The New Yorker on Monday confirmed the fears a lot of LGBTQ people have about Vice President Mike Pence.
In the story, titled "The Danger of President Pence," writer Jane Meyer reports that, according to an anonymous legal scholar who met with Trump and Pence, Trump made an awful joke about the Vice President's attitudes toward gay people. Spoiler alert: there's nothing funny about it.
During the meeting, Trump and Pence started off discussing Roe v. Wade, and Pence's efforts to overturn it. When the legal scholar made the point that, if Roe v. Wade was overturned, states would likely legalize abortion on their own, Trump took the opportunity to make a jab at his vice president.
"You see?” the POTUS reportedly said to Pence. "You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway."
When the conversation in a meeting turned to gay rights, Donald Trump motioned toward Mike Pence and joked: https://t.co/jnE1TdT8CFpic.twitter.com/SMW3E0PczI
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) October 16, 2017
Meyer writes that as the conversation turned to gay rights, things got even uglier.
"Don’t ask that guy," he said, in reference to Pence. "He wants to hang them all!"
As The Hill notes, the former governor of Indiana supported an amendment in 2006 that attempted to define marriage as being between a man and a woman, and once said that legalizing same-sex marriage would result in "societal collapse." Vice President Pence's discriminatory attitudes toward the LGBTQ community are nothing new — but this alleged quote from Trump is an especially terrifying confirmation of what many have already feared with Pence in the White House.
While the views held by President Trump are pretty terrifying, a Mike Pence presidency (should Trump ever be impeached) could prove to be even scarier.