On February 27, Woodward told "Politico" that before the column was published, Woodward had called a senior White House official, later identified by reporters as economic adviser Gene Sperling, to discuss the piece, and that the official had "yelled at for about a half-hour" before sending him a page-long email that included the sentence, "I think you will regret staking out that claim." In "Politico"'s reporting, Woodward's focus on that line was described as "making clear he saw [that sentence as a veiled threat", although Woodward did not use the word "threat" or "threatened". Several other sources also indicated that Woodward had expressed the line as an intended threat.