Like a lot of West Wing jokes, this is one of those where the more you know about the story the better the scene gets.

There's what seems like a throw-away line by Mandy (IIRC) where she jokes "and then he locked the doors and made them all eat 2 tons of cheese".

...except THAT is far closer to what actually happened than Leo's aspirational version.

As he was leaving the whitehouse after his second term he invited all of the politicians who'd been stumping on what a bad president he'd been to the white house "in the spirit of commity"... then when they all showed up he literally DID lock the doors with all the windows shut and proceed to cut the maggoty VERY very off 1200 lb cheese wheel.

There are contemporaneous accounts of the smell alone causing people to lose consciousness.