President Donald Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Mick Mulvaney on Saturday told a group of Republicans in a high-level, closed-door meeting that Trump still frequently asks him, “Why did Roy Moore lose?”

Audio of the meeting was recorded and given to the New York Times, who reported on the candid discussion amongst conservative officials, including Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel.

“The president asks me all the time, ‘Why did Roy Moore lose?’” Mulvaney said. “That’s easy. He was a terrible candidate.”In December, Democrat Doug Jones defeated the former Alabama Chief Justice by 1.5 percentage points in a nasty special election for the United State Senate.

Moore during the campaign was accused of sexual assault and pedophilia, which recently popped into the news again when comedian Sacha Baron Cohen pranked him with a “pedophile detection” test for the new Showtime series “Who is America.” Moore and his wife Kayla are now suing for $95 million because of that television episode, however, they did drop a lawsuit this past week against the Highway 31 Super PAC and affiliated consultants.

Moore has denied wrongdoing and is currently suing the women who made the public accusations for causing “irrevocable damage” to his reputation “that affected the outcome of the Senate election in December 2017,” according to the lawsuit filed in April.

However, in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity the day after the allegations were published in November 2017, Moore would not definitively rule out having dated teenagers when he was in his thirties.

“You ended his candidacy,” Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera told Hannity on air immediately after the interview aired.

Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn