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Example. When the Vice President would come in every morning, if the President was down from the residence, he would immediately go to the Oval Office and talk with him. It was almost like a habit. And I was there a lot of times when he did it.
So when I say "pained," I don't think I would have ever used the word "pained." What was disappointing was I saw a relationship that had gone on for 4 years that was incredibly close.
I mean, look, they would talk -- when we would fly on Air Force Two, they would talk in a flight, if we went somewhere, three, four, five times a day on the airplane, you know.
And I know that because, if I was in there, the Vice President had a term, which was "Give me the room," which means get out, "to do that." And he said, "Please give me the room to do this."
Or the President would call. And I would know that, because as his NSA I was always on constant comms with the front of the airplane, who the Vice President was talking to, just in case, because I didn't want somebody that -- if Vladimir Putin had called him, I wanted to make sure that I had put the headset on. So I'd do that. So I knew he called him a lot.
So the answer was, since I saw that close relationship, to fracture the relationship.
BY MR. :
Q Okay. So I want to get into that to make sure we're talking about the same thing. And the question I asked was the kind of pressure that the President was placing on the Vice President. And I think you said it bothered you, not necessarily pained you.
A Well, the pressure didn't bother me because I saw that in a lot of times.
First of all, the White House is a very pressure-filled environment. And there
