President Donald Trump is an "exaggerator" who knew his policies wouldn't generate the 5% growth he had promised while campaigning, according to Stephen Moore, who served as a campaign advisor to Trump and was a prospective Fed nominee.

In an interview with Mehdi Hasan, columnist at The Intercept, Moore stopped just short of calling the president a liar, but did say Trump hurts himself with falsehoods.

"He should stop saying things that are untrue," Moore says in a clip from Al Jazeera English television show that Hasan provided on his Twitter feed.

"I think Trump is an exaggerator, and I think it gets him in trouble," Moore later says. "It's like he said we're going to get 5% growth. We knew we weren't going to get 5% growth."

The Trump-backed tax cuts and deregulation measures led to 2.9% growth in 2018, a year after U.S. GDP rose at a 2.4% pace. However, growth has slowed this year and some economists believe a recession could be a year or so away.