Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren The “Fridays at Five” gathering in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, one of three White House farewell events honoring departing senior adviser ANITA DUNN, was proceeding along as most attendees expected. Dunn had already spoken about how the communications unit she led for more than three and a half years was “the best team [she’s] ever worked with.” And various teams had made short presentations about the baked goods they had contributed to the event in tribute to Dunn, who was known for bringing in homemade cakes and cookies for staff. A group of senior advisers had just entered the room with the event in full swing — among them chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS, deputy chief of staff NATALIE QUILLIAN and national security adviser ELIZABETH SHERWOOD-RANDALL. Moments later, Dunn surprised people by announcing that she had “a few more things to say.” Pulling out some notes, Dunn proceeded to speak in blunt terms for roughly 10 minutes, according to five people who were in the room, about themes that, to some, seemed laden with subtext: loyalty, revenge and advice from a career in bare-knuckle politics. “It was crazy — the most epic, jaw-dropping speech I’ve ever heard,” one attendee told West Wing Playbook. “This was talked about for days.” Dunn spoke about her Washington career and tenure in the West Wing, suggesting that the most accurate depictions were not “House of Cards,” or “The West Wing” or even “Veep.” To understand how to succeed in Washington — to understand the use of power, she said, was to know “The Godfather.” Having spent a good part of her final days on campus meeting with younger staffers looking for career advice, Dunn offered a few pearls of wisdom from the film for those in the room. “Never hate your enemies,” she said. “It clouds your judgment.” “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” she continued, underlining the point that paying back those who’ve wronged you could take months, even years. And those who are complaining the loudest about leaks are “the biggest leakers,” she added. With staffers struck silent, some struggling to suppress giggles and gasps, Dunn began offering quotes from ROBERT PENN WARREN’s “All The King’s Men,” the seminal novel based on former Louisiana Gov. HUEY LONG, which she urged younger staffers to read. The quote, which she read from her page of notes, underlined her belief in opposition research: “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud,” she read. “There is always something.” And on the subject of brotherhood and shared political battle scars, she quoted from SHAKESPEARE’s “Henry V”: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” When Dunn finished, Zients interjected a few words about her having been a valuable partner. Dunn, attendees said, seemed eager to move past more tributes. “The ice cream is melting, and I made cobbler,” she declared. Staffers indulged in the cobbler — peach, we’re told — but some told West Wing Playbook they left the event “shook” by what had just occurred. “It seemed like she was making a point, that her words may have been meant for some of the other senior aides who weren’t there,” another attendee said. Over the weekend that followed, two attendees said, many of them watched “The Godfather” for the first time. On Tuesday, during a live conversation at the CNN-POLITICO grill in Chicago, we asked Dunn about her farewell address and, gamely, she pulled out her iPhone and referred to the notes she’d written for the speech itself. “It's about the use of power,” Dunn said about the 1972 FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA epic. “Some very invaluable lessons in it that I just thought people should carry forward and the most surprising — and very upsetting — thing was how many people on this staff had never seen the movie.” Asked if aides were right to read anything more into her speech, Dunn demurred: “I just want people to understand how to be more effective at politics.” But on the matter of revenge, she expanded just a bit: “If you’re, like, processing things the right way, you will choose not to exercise that revenge ... What I told the staff was you don’t need to go get revenge right away. You can pick your times and just wait for your moments.” MESSAGE US — Are you NANCY PELOSI? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. OUR DEEPEST APOLOGIES TO LYNN SWEET… In yesterday’s edition of West Wing Playbook, we wrote that LYNN SWEET of the Chicago Sun-Times and other reporters cut the long security line at the United Center. But Sweet reached out to say that we got it wrong. After waiting in line for 30 or 40 minutes with a Sun-Times intern, Sweet told us that she spotted someone she wanted to talk to and jumped ahead, but she ultimately went back to her place in line. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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