Marc Short, the former White House Director of Legislative Affairs for President Donald Trump, had trouble on CNN defending President Donald Trump after he was blatantly contradicted by his own intelligence officials during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
During a CNN panel discussion, Short claimed that there was no friction between Trump and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, even though Coats directly contradicted many of the president's claims about events surrounding Russia, ISIS and North Korea.
Host Alisyn Camerota, however, was not buying his spin and quickly moved to corner him about the president's false statements.
"Marc, why doesn't he believe them?" she asked him, in reference to the president disavowing information from his own intelligence agencies.
Short tried to pivot away from the question by acknowledging that Trump has been "exaggerating" when he claims that ISIS has been totally defeated, while noting that the terrorist group has nonetheless lost the vast majority of its territory.
Camerota didn't let him off there, however.
"Is North Korea denuclearizing?" she asked him.
"No, North Korea's not," he admitted. "I think the intelligence community has been pretty upfront about it."
"So why is the president saying that it is?" she asked.
Short admitted that North Korea isn't handing over its nuclear weapons, but he did credit Trump with getting North Korea to return the remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean War.
Watch the video below.