CNN pundit Van Jones got into a testy exchange with a reporter who suggested his use of the term “whitelash” is tied with a sense of “sore loser syndrome.”

The former White House adviser took reporters’ questions before his Tuesday keynote speech at the Broadbent Institute’s annual gala in Toronto when Joe Warmington began talking about president-elect Donald Trump.

Their introduction got off to a rocky start:

Warmington: Mr. Jones, I wanted to ask you about, you talked about the rhetoric, about the Nazi party, all these types of things and yet Mr. Trump did win the election and he won it fairly handily … Jones: No.

Trump won the presidency with a majority in the Electoral College. But Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with a two-million lead, according to the Cook Political Report.

Warmington revised his wording before cutting Jones off with a reference to the civil war.

Warmington: And well according to the electoral college he won it fairly, well, he won the election. And I wondered, you use the word “whitelash” which I think a lot of people felt was a race term … Jones: They only felt it was a racially-based term because it was a racially-based term and the reason I knew … Warmington: Because of the civil war…

Jones explained, “The reason I used the term whitelash is because you have people who want to say that the working class is endorsing Trump and that is not fair because black workers and Latino workers and Native American workers and Asian workers have all rejected Trump in big, big numbers. So there is both a race and a class element to this phenomenon.”

Earlier, Jones clarified his use of “whitelash” is inclusive of a growing negative sentiment toward Washington and “pollsters that think they know everything.”

He added the election day results also showed a “certain part of our country against multiculturalism.”