On Sunday, pundits and lawmakers discussed the potential fallout facing Gov. Chris Christie (R., N.J.) following revelations that lane closures on the George Washington Bridge were politically motivated.
"I think what you saw the other day [at Christie’s press conference] was leadership," said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Meet the Press. "We all make mistakes, but the real question is what do you do when mistakes happen. There’s no question he admitted mistakes happened. He admitted he trusted people that lied to him. America’s a forgiving people, but they’re forgiving when you take ownership, you admit mistakes, you take corrective action."
Despite insinuations that the incident is a career-ender for Christie, officials from the RNC maintained it was unlikely to hamper a 2016 run.
RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said on CNN’s State of the Union that Christie was "absolutely" a leading Republican candidate for the presidential nomination.
"I would argue that how he handled this really says a lot about the type of leaders we need more of in this country," Spicer said. "I’m not defending what happened, but I think that what America is yearning for is that yes mistakes will happen, do you own them, do you take responsibility for them, and do you take action to ensure that they don’t happen again."
"Too often, frankly, whether it’s Benghazi, GSA, the IRS scandal … we say ‘it’s somebody else’s fault, blame somebody else, I had nothing to do with this.’ What Chris Christie did with this was say, yes the buck stops with me. I’m in charge… I’m going to fix it," Spicer said.
Christie’s subsequent actions, Priebus argued, is what makes this situation different than previous scandals where President Obama was accused of setting a "tone" that led others to believe their actions were acceptable.
"New Jersey is a huge, complicated government, and so is the Port Authority," Priebus said. "People made decisions at the Port Authority that they shouldn't have made. And those people are gone. The person that oversaw, at least in part, some of the decisions at the Port Authority, seemed to have apparent knowledge of what was going on, she is gone. After the fact, the campaign manager made comments that were callous, and Chris Christie didn't like it, he's gone."
Rudy Giuliani also defended Christie.
"This is what happens in political operations," the former mayor of New York City said on This Week. "People get wrong messages. It happens all the time. Again, I go back to the IRS scandal. The people in the IRS thought President Obama wanted them to do this. President Obama didn’t want them to do this, but they got the sense because of that culture that they were supposed to target right-wing groups."
Many contend that 2016 is far enough away that Christie will come out largely unscathed.
"Nothing matters at this point," George Will told "Fox News Sunday."
"At this point in the 1972 cycle the frontrunner was Edmund Muskie. … in 1980 people said watch out for John Connally, he’s a coming star. 1984 they said John Glenn, the movie the Right Stuff is coming out, watch out for John Glenn. … In 2008, to come to modern history, at this point, the far away leader was Rudy Giuliani."
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were hesitant to discuss the topic at length. Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fl.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) largely avoided the topic, noting they would wait to see what occurs following the ongoing investigations.