Chris Christie and Bridgeghazi Dominate the Sunday Shows
It's been three full days since New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gave his marathon press conference about the Bridgeghazi scandal. The story still dominated the Sunday morning shows.
.It's been three full days since New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gave his marathon press conference about the Bridgeghazi scandal and was squired to Fort Lee to apologize to Mayor Mark Sokolich. The story still dominated the Sunday morning shows.
Meet the Press, This Week, and Fox News Sunday all led with the scandal. While the commentary fell somewhat predictably along the lines one might expect, there was a broad sense that no one believes the story has fully run its course. Accordingly, there were more verbal shrugs then we're used to from the commentariat.
On Meet the Press, Mark Halperin of Time Magazine made this observation.
"I have been stunned in my calls this week to Republicans and conservatives and watching people on Twitter, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, big supporters of Christie, everyone says, "He better be telling the truth. If he's telling the truth."
No one is taking him at his word, as best I can tell. And even Republicans who are huge supporters of him, they say, "Well, if he's telling the truth, he's fine."
Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich also appeared to speak about his meeting with Governor Christie. The skeptical Sokolich said that he would take Christie at his word, but when pressed on some of the details, added that "there's just a lot of stuff out there though."
On Fox News Sunday, Christie earned plaudits from Karl Rove, who praised Christie for handling the issue directly, rendering it useless for attacks by the Democrats.
"You'll notice we haven't been hearing a lot from the Clinton camp about this. The contrast with President Clinton and Secretary Clinton's handling of Benghazi. So I think it's going to be hard for Democrats to turn this into an issue."
Rove then added a qualifier: "The question is whether the facts are going to turn this into an issue."
On This Week, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani likened the Christie scandal to Benghazi and the IRS controversies.