Margaret and Donna Rally Assistants Against Salary Leak Backlash
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Margaret and Donna address White House assistants about salary leaks and urge discretion to avoid press scrutiny.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Inquisitive concern probing for transparency in crisis.
Interrupts the meeting with a direct question about the source of the salary leak information, representing junior staff curiosity and vigilance amid the unfolding damage control briefing.
- • Clarify the leak's origins for staff awareness
- • Ensure accurate understanding of the threat
- • Knowing intel sources aids effective response
- • Transparency binds the team against sabotage
Steadfast authority laced with pragmatic urgency to preserve unity.
Presides over the assistant meeting with commanding presence, announces the Washington Times salary leak bluntly, urges stifling public complaints for a month and channeling grievances to bosses, concludes with thanks amid applause, rallying the group decisively.
- • Quell staff bitching to deny press ammunition
- • Redirect internal complaints through chain of command
- • Public whining strengthens opposition narratives
- • Boss-level handling maintains team discipline
frustrated and insistent
confronting Donna about moose meat on eBay, demanding intern be fired
- • address ethical breach of selling White House property on eBay
- • ensure intern is fired
casual and friendly
speaking on phone with Sam, checking in and suggesting lunch at Charlie's
- • arrange lunch with Sam
neutral
greeting Donna, receiving phone messages from Ginger, calling Kevin Kahn to arrange lunch
- • return call to Kevin Kahn
- • schedule lunch meeting
- • facilitate Sam's return call
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Serves as the inciting incident for the meeting; Margaret reveals its theft from congressional files and impending Washington Times splash, Donna traces its path from subcommittee submissions to opposition sabotage, transforming the absent ledger into a rallying cry for silence and loyalty that underscores the administration's vulnerability to internal data weaponization.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
Positioned as the predatory publisher primed to detonate the leaked salary list, prompting Margaret's preemptive strike to starve their story of staff quotes, embodying media's role in amplifying opposition sabotage and testing White House cohesion amid broader scandals.
Donna identifies it as the bureaucratic origin point requiring White House salary submissions, whose traditional leaks to opposition enable the crisis, framing congressional oversight as an unwitting conduit for sabotage that the staff must now navigate.
Manifests through its junior assistants in the meeting, whom Margaret and Donna reframe from 'assistants' to 'White House staffers,' invoking institutional pride to lockdown leaks and affirm service ethos against external sabotage.
Donna explicitly accuses them of orchestrating the subcommittee leak to the press, positioning the opposition as cunning saboteurs deploying petty scandals to fracture Bartlet staff unity and distract from MS hints and terror plots.
Narrative Connections
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Key Dialogue
"MARGARET: "And a lot of us were thinking that instead of giving the press a reason to write a story we'd hold off on the bitching about how little we're paid for like a month so that we can deal with it the way it should be dealt with, which is with our bosses.""
"DONNA: "Okay, so no matter what it says tomorrow, it's a privilege to serve our country. Try not to everybody use those exact words.""
"FEMALE ASSISTANT: "I wasn't here last year, the press really cares what the assistants have to say?" DONNA: "We're not assistants in this kind of story we're White House staffers or prominent Democrats with close ties to the President.""