President Barack Obama on Thursday downplayed his tarmac tiff with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, saying that media coverage has blown the tense moment out of proportion.

“This is not a big deal,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News’s Diane Sawyer. Brewer, a Republican, greeted the president as he landed in Arizona on Wednesday and the two appeared to have a brief, strained conversation.

The brief to-do was all over network and cable news Thursday, and was the subject of the first question White House press secretary Jay Carney got from reporters traveling with the president – all distracting from the White House’s efforts to draw attention to the proposals for economic growth that Obama is rolling out in his post-State of the Union trip to five states this week.

Obama said he thought Brewer may have been seeking out media attention. “It’s always good publicity for a Republican if they’re in an argument with me,” he said. “I think this is a classic example of things getting blown out of proportion.”

After the conversation, Brewer told reporters that Obama had indicated he was “a little disturbed” by her description of an Oval Office meeting they’d had in her book, “Scorpions for Breakfast.”

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