Eeek! The White House is after me!

Press corps to Woodward: Really?

By DYLAN BYERS |, Politico.com
2/28/13 4:12 PM EST

Bob Woodward has suggested that the White House threatened him. Many of his colleagues in the press corps aren't buying it.

By the standards of this White House, a statement like the one senior White House official Gene Sperling wrote to Woodward last week -- "I think you will regret staking out that claim" -- is both mild and familiar, reporters who have dealt with the Obama administration say.

"It's not a big deal. You've been yelled at by people in the White House, I've been yelled at by people in the White House -- I'm sure this has happened to a thousand people in Washington," Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, who deals with the White House frequently, told POLITICO. "The whole thing seems like a tempest in a teapot."

"I get emails like this almost every hour, whether it's from the White House or Capitol Hill," said Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director and senior White House correspondent. "For better or worse, flacks get paid to push back."

(More here.)