Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) on Wednesday evening reflected upon her testy encounter with President Obama earlier in the day, saying he had proven himself to be "thin-skinned" with his comments about her book.
On Wednesday afternoon, Obama touched down in Phoenix and was greeted by Brewer on the tarmac. They reportedly "spoke intensely for a few minutes." Brewer said it was because "he was a little disturbed about my book," particularly a passage in which she had depicted Obama as "patronizing" during an earlier visit.
(Watch video of the exchange below)
Brewer has since addressed the issue in a number of interviews, claiming that President Obama had insisted on talking about the treatment he had received in her book, rather than the economic issues currently facing her state.
"He was somewhat thin-skinned and a little tense to say the least. I was trying to be very calm," Brewer told radio host Mike Broomhead on KFYI radio, according to BuzzFeed.
She repeated similar comments in an interview with reporters on the tarmac, shown above, saying, "I thought that he was pretty thin-skinned."
And in a later interview with Fox News' Greta Van Sustern, she defended her book and used the same term to jab Obama.
"The bottom line is the book is factual. The book is true. I want our borders secured. I want our nation protected. He wants amnesty. We're never going to agree on that. So I don't know why he was surprised by my book," she said. "He evidently is and thin-skinned in regards to it."
The controversy over Brewer's characterization of Obama dates back to an Oval Office meeting in 2010. At the time she had called it "very cordial," but in her book she wrote she felt Obama had been "condescending." In an interview in November, she also said she had "felt a little bit like I was being lectured to, and I was a little kid in a classroom, if you will, and he was this wise professor and I was this little kid, and this little kid knows what the problem is and I felt minimized to say the least."