Joe Kent

I served as her chief of staff before I was confirmed.

I ran the beachhead team and the landing team for her before she was confirmed.

So we have a good relationship.

I brought my frustrations to her over and over again.

And then same thing, the vice president has always been

I'd say giving me probably more time than he should.

Very, very generous.

He's got a lot of people that want to get in his ear and he would always give me the time of day whenever I said I had a concern.

So I'm deeply appreciative of that.

And so, you know, he would hear me out when it came time for me to resign.

I wanted to do it the proper way.

I said, hey, I'm happy to take my letter into the president and to resign to him if that's proper.

I got to speak with the vice president one-on-one.

The DNI joined us.

And then later I got a phone call from the president.

Got it.

But that was kind of the way it went down.

So then how did you make of it when the president, Mac, I think we have this, he said he always thought you were weak on security.

I mean, how does that feel personally?

I assume you knew it was coming of some kind, but genuinely, like as a person who served your country, who served multiple combat tours, who lost your wife in combat.