Have you ever wondered what conversations inside the White House were like following the revelation that GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually assaulted numerous underage women?

Thanks to a recording of a pre-2018 midterm Republican fundraiser shared exclusively with Notes From the Freak Show, you no longer have to wonder.

After opening his speech by joking that he “[has] to drink in order to get into heaven,” then Director of the Office of Management and Budget and current acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney recounted a conversation with Trump.

“The President asked me one time, right after the Roy Moore election, he said ‘how did we lose an election in Alabama?!’ I said, ‘well Mr. President, we nominated someone who might be a pedophile.’”

The crowd erupted in laughter.

Setting aside the fact that a room full of high dollar Republican donors thinks it’s funny they nominated a known sexual predator in a Senate election, Mulvaney’s speech contained several other newsworthy remarks.

After admitting that he only won his first Congressional race because of President Obama, Mulvaney repeatedly expressed doubt that a blue wave was imminent, saying “this is not 2010,” and “I just don’t see it.”

Elaborating on what he didn’t see, Mulvaney said, “I do not see the suburban housewife who votes sometimes and sometimes doesn’t vote getting so angry that she is going to a mid day rally some place in order to protest the President, protest whatever the other side is doing.”

On policy, Mulvaney compared Trump’s tax bill to the ACA, “Democrats think they have that now, they say, in a tax bill, um, that they don’t like very much, so here’s that proposition, alright — John, you’re lower middle class and you do a little bit better, you got a $1000 bonus, you’re happy, and Mark is the CEO of a big company you got a good tax break and you made an extra $1,000,000 this year.”

“The Democratic party doesn’t like that, but is John really fired up about that? Is he really upset that someone else is doing better?”

As it turns out, while the bill did result in a tax cut for most US residents, it also resulted in substantial tax increases for families of fallen service members, truck-drivers, and other groups whose support Trump hoped to earn in 2020. Additionally, many who did receive tax cuts didn’t even notice, with only 1 in 5 taxpayers reporting that they received a cut.

On Trump’s historic unpopularity, Mulvaney remarked, “people were happy that Donald Trump got elected, they may not like him, and a lot of people don’t, but they like what he’s doing.”

“The President asks me all the time, I go to the Oval Office from time to time, I was in there today, and we have this little routine that he goes ‘Mick how we doin, how we doin, how are things going?’ — ‘Mr. President it’s good.’ ‘Did you see the poll numbers?’ ‘Mr. President, I don’t look at poll numbers.’”

“We do this all the time ‘Mr. President, you know I don’t look at poll numbers, I look at the economic numbers.’ He’s like, ‘Oh no, I love poll numbers.’ I go ‘no, economic numbers because Mr. President, people vote for you even if they don’t like you, if they think it’s good for them.’”

“That’s the attitude I think we have right now in the country, is that people are generally pleased with the direction the country is going.”

“Now, that said, is it going to be easy? No — absolutely not, which is why I’m here, because it’s not going to be easy. A couple different things, first of all traditionally this is always a tough election cycle — the first midterm election after a new President takes office is traditionally, you all probably know this as well as anybody, the party in power typically lose seats.”

“We’re supposed to lose seats, historically. Add to that the fact that we have an unprecedented number of retirements, more than 40, what does that mean? It means that in at least 40 races we have un-tested candidates, people who have never done this before, I have news for you, this is not easy.”

Allowing for the possibility that Republicans would lose at least some seats, Mulvaney said, “good candidates win, and bad candidates lose. Good candidates win and bad candidates lose, which, face it, is all we can really ask for in the first place. If we can field better candidates than the other side then we should win.”

By Mulvaney’s standards, the GOP lost the 2018 midterms not because of Trump’s underwater approval ratings, and not because the tax bill was a bust — they lost because they nominated bad candidates.

“The day after election day this year you are going to wake up and you’re going to read about races that we have held for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and that we lost that day.” According to Mulvaney, this means “the person who was in that seat got lazy.”

Addressing the possibility of impeachment, Mulvaney recalled another Oval Office conversation, “Mr. President, if the Democrats win you’re going to get impeached,’ he’s like, ‘is that bad?’ I’m like, ‘you know, Mr. President,’ I said, ‘I don’t think it is.’”

“And I’m sure I’m the only person who told him that. He’s like, ‘why is that?’ I said, ‘because an impeachment trial would be the greatest daytime television drama of all time. And you would be the absolute best person ever to do that.’ He sort of lit up, and said, ‘I’d be great!’”

The crowd found this so amusing that one attendee, overcome with laughter, can be heard banging on the table to express his amusement.