Veteran news reporter Bob Woodward reportedly offered a blunt portrait of former Vice President Al Gore during a speech to an audience in Youngstown, Ohio, Thursday.
According to a report in the Youngstown Vindicator, Woodward told an “unflattering, but amusing story about sitting next to former Vice President Al Gore at a dinner.”
Woodward said that sitting next to the former vice president was “taxing,” and “to be really honest, it’s unpleasant.”
Woodward added that Gore pushed him to explain why the press did not take on President George W. Bush over the war in Iraq. Gore, a reporter before he became a politician, “thinks he invented [reporting] also,” Woodward said in reference to the former vice president’s often misquoted contention that he invented the Internet.
According to a 2011 report in The Hill, Woodward told a similar anecdote at a Organization for International Investment dinner in D.C., about how sitting next to Al Gore was “unpleasant.”