The White House on Tuesday denied an anecdote found in a The New Yorker article about President Donald Trump joking that Vice President Mike Pence “wants to hang” all gay people.

In The Danger of President Pence, Jane Mayer traces Pence's career in politics, starting as a U.S. House member, and his ties to the social conservative movement and the corporate right.

Mayer recounts a meeting Trump and Pence had with a legal scholar at which Trump mocked Pence's socially conservative views.

When the legal scholar pointed out that even without Roe v. Wade many states would legalize abortion on their own, Trump said to Pence, “You see? You've wasted all this time and energy on it, and it's not going to end abortion anyway.”

When the subject of gay rights turned up, Trump, motioning to Pence, joke, “Don't ask that guy – he wants to hang them all!”

In a statement given to POLITICO, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called the article a work of “fiction.”

“From start to finish the article relied on fiction rather than facts,” Sanders said. “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.”

Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah also denied the story.

“The New Yorker piece is filled with unsubstantiated, unsourced claims that are untrue and offensive,” Farah said. “Articles like this are why the American people have lost so much faith in the press.”

The New Yorker said in a statement given to POLITICO that it stands by its reporting.

“Trump joked that Vice-President Pence 'wants to hang' gay people. We stand by the story,” the magazine wrote.

Pence has a long record of opposing LGBT rights in the U.S. House and as governor of Indiana.

He made national headlines in 2015 when he signed a bill into law that opponents said would allow business owners to refuse to serve members of the LGBT community based on their religious beliefs. Then-Governor Pence at first defended his decision to sign the bill, but a growing backlash pushed him to call for a “fix” to the law.