Famed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said President Obama is displaying "a kind of madness" he hasn't seen in a long time.

He specifically criticized President Obama's decision not to deploy the USS Truman aircraft carrier because of the sequester.

On the MSNBC program "Morning Joe," Woodward said it's "madness" for the commander in chief not to protect national security and then blame it on a "piece of paper." He was referring to the sequester document.

Woodward later told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that a senior White House official had warned him that he would regret publishing a column last weekend. Woodward wrote in that column that it was President Obama who came up with the idea of the sequester in the first place.

"It was said very clearly, 'You will regret doing this,'" Woodward recalled.

He said the threat was made by "...a very senior person, and it makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters you're going to regret something that you believe in."

Woodward also said he does not believe the president would support a communications strategy of threatening reporters.