McFarland: Woodward 'way off base' in Fox News expose

Maybe it's damage control. Maybe it's the truth. Either way, K.T. McFarland is denying that recently made-public comments she made to Gen. David Petraeus were anything more than "two people... joking around about the presidential campaign." McFarland is a national security expert for Fox News.

In a column for FoxNews.com, she writes:

Today, I’m bewildered by the reaction of the press to Bob Woodward’s story in the Washington Post. Though Bob is in possession of a secretly recorded tape of my conversation with the general, he was way off base to characterize it as a serious attempt to get him to run, or to give him political advice.

Petraeus and I were having fun. Having just told me definitively that he wouldn’t run, he suggested that maybe Ailes could run this non-existent campaign.It was not a serious conversation plotting General Petraeus’ political future; it was the kind of idle speculation that happens in every campaign season. That’s why they call it the silly season. I knew he was serious about not wanting to run, and he knew I wasn’t serious in pressing it.

This week, Woodward's story in the Post made waves for revealing details of a 2011 conversation between McFarland and Petraeus. In the course of it, McFarland apparently relays word to Petraeus that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes wanted him to run for president and that Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, would "bankroll" it.