BOB WOODWARD: A 'Very Senior' White House Person Warned Me I'd 'Regret' What I'm Doing
CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.
"It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, 'You're going to regret doing something that you believe in,'" Woodward said.
"I think they're confused," Woodward said of the White House's pushback on his reporting.
The White House aide who Woodward said threatened him was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, BuzzFeed's Ben Smith reported.
Earlier today on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Woodward ripped into Obama in what has become an ongoing feud between the veteran Washington Post journalist and the White House. Woodward said Obama was showing a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.
The Defense Department said in early February that it would not deploy the U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf, citing budget concerns relating to the looming cuts known as the sequester.
"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said on MSNBC.
"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need?'" Or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' ... because of some budget document?"
Last weekend, Woodward called out Obama for what he said was "moving the goal posts" on the sequester by requesting that revenue be part of a deal to avert it.