“I think David is mixing up my personal feelings with my position on the issue,” Obama said in an interview with BuzzFeed News published Tuesday.

Pres. Obama says he “always felt” gay couples should have equal benefits, he found it “frustrating to me not to, I think, be able to square that with what were a whole bunch of religious sensitivities out there.”

“I’m just not very good at bullshitting,” Axelrod reports Obama telling him. Axelrod also claims it was the sensitivities of the black church that particularly concerned his advisers, warning him he could lose North Carolina, which in fact he did in 2012 after he came out for gay marriage.