Shortly after Mike Johnson appeared to be two votes away from retaining the presidency of the House on Friday, Marjorie Taylor Greene — the staunch Trump ally and fiery Republican congresswoman from Georgia — stood in the middle of the House floor, continuing to talk intently on her cellphone.

Even though she covered the device with her hand, Evelyn Hockstein, an astute photographer for Reuters, caught the name of the person on the other end of the call – the new White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

It was a tangible sign of the enormous interest that President-elect Donald Trump had in this vote. Trump had enthusiastically endorsed Johnson as speaker for the upcoming session of Congress earlier this week, and a loss in the first round of voting would have been an embarrassment.

Behind the scenes, however, the wheels were turning rapidly – there was a chaotic interlude in the House of Representatives after Johnson initially seemed to be heading for at least a temporary defeat.

At some point, Johnson left the room, followed by two of the men who had opposed him, Ralph Norman of North Carolina and Keith Self of Texas. Meanwhile, other House members and their families strolled around, chatting and waiting to see what happened next.

When Johnson finally returned, he was beaming.

Trump himself appealed directly to Norman and Self to support Johnson via telephone conversation, Republican sources told news agencies such as Politico.

Since the vote had not been officially declared over, Norman and Self were able to switch their votes to the Louisianan, bringing him just to the 218 mark needed to retain the speaker’s gavel. Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie was the lone Republican holdout.

Both Norman and Self told reporters after the vote that they had spoken with Trump throughout the day.

Norman said he spoke with Trump twice on Friday. The first was during a phone call lasting several minutes when his Republican colleague Nancy Mace handed him her phone and the president-elect was on the other end of the line.

The second time was a longer, 15-minute call involving Norman, Johnson and Self, he said, without confirming the exact time.

“Trump was exactly right when he told me Mike was the only one who had the likeability factor,” Norman said.

He went on to describe Trump as “excited” about the Republican trifecta in Washington – control of the House, Senate and presidency.

“I said, ‘Mr. President, I agree with you, I just hope Mike has the courage to go through with this,'” Norman said.

Self also said he spoke with Trump several times on Friday.

“We had a discussion about the entire process,” he said of his conversation with the president-elect.

Ultimately, embarrassment was avoided – even if Trump publicly gave the impression that he was concentrating more on other things.

In the middle of the vote, as the names of House members were called in alphabetical order, the president-elect complained on social media about the possibility that U.S. flags would be at half-staff – partial – during his Jan. 20 inauguration the traditional mourning process following the death of former President Jimmy Carter.

The negotiations on Friday afternoon made it clear how tenuous the Republican majority in the House of Representatives will be in the coming months.

In addition to the Republicans’ first three votes against Johnson, five other conservatives who opposed the compromises Johnson had made with Democrats in the past delayed voting in the first vote. Although they eventually gave in, it was a very obvious shot across the speaker’s bow.

After the final vote, the House Freedom Caucus — some of whom were among the temporary holdouts — released a statement saying they ultimately supported Johnson because they supported Trump.

“We did this despite our serious reservations about the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months,” they wrote.

At the moment, the party has a 219-215 lead over Democrats – but that could shrink by two if Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida fill the administration posts offered by Trump. It will be months before special elections decide her successor.

That means Trump will need to keep his entire Republican membership in the House together if he is to pass major pieces of his legislative agenda early in his presidency, including radical immigration reform, new tariffs and tax and spending cuts.

As Friday showed, this could be a tall order.

Additional reporting by Rachel Looker