Do they not remember who in the press corpse first asked about it during the White House daily briefing? Yes, it was that radical nutball Jessica Yellin of CNN, whose report showed up on a skeptical segment of Erin Burnett's show:
That was followed by the WaPo's Glenn Kessler in his 'fact-checker' column, to which he labeled it "undetermined". The Times followed up yesterday by informing readers that the New Republic's new owner is Chris Hughes, a former Obama aide. They asked the original question.
It's completely predictable that administration staff would try to turn this into a new birtherism--they certainly need the distraction in their hip pocket as the economy teeters, Menendez is investigated, the Middle East rages while the gun control mandate appears to be waning. And there will be a contingent of those who don't believe.
The interesting thing to watch is how the mainstreamers cover this going forward. Notice how CNN followed up yesterday with this report, which tried to pretend Erin Burnett wasn't right there alongside Marsha Blackburn in questioning the notion. Recall that the initial stories coming out about the TNR interview were gushing about Obama's comments about hunters, ie, he's not a loony liberal gun-hating commie pinko fag who wants to disarm tough guys with scary assault weapons. He's just a regular guy who wants to ban some guns not used for hunting, skeet, and photo-ops. Tomorrow he will be using Minneapolis as a photo-op for his gun control 'package' so let's see where things lead. One can guess.
GAGGLING 2/4/13
Press Sec Carney had a gaggle aboard the aircraft heading to the Minneapolis gun control photo op (starring Al Franken) and of course, skeet shooting came up:
Q Actually I have one more -- on skeet shooting. Why did the White House --
MR. CARNEY: I was wondering. (Laughter.)
Q Why did the White House decide to release the skeet shooting photo two days before this trip, particularly when the press corps had requested any photos of skeet shooting days earlier? And will you now release a list of friends or family or guests with whom the President has skeet shot, since you do that with golf partners? Thank you.
MR. CARNEY: Let me say this. I thought the question was going to be, why did we wait five days. The fact is the President was asked a question -- did not volunteer, but was asked a question -- about whether or not he had ever shot a weapon. He answered with the truth, which is that he has enjoyed shooting competitively with friends at Camp David on multiple occasions.
I think it's fair to say that we believed that would have been answer enough. And when I said from the podium that as a rule we don’t treat his private time at Camp David with friends and family as matters for public consumption, that's the truth, as you know. But there were persistent questions about this, so we decided to release a photo of the President shooting at Camp David. The timing of that I think is explained by what I just said.Bold to point out that nobody should challenge anything the president says, ever. That's what this entire thing was about, trust in the assertions of a president currently jetting around trying to get gun bans through Congress and threatening that if they won't act, he will. Yes, this is all about isolating and freezing then ridiculing the Tea Party, not guns.
But such is what passes for transparently answering questions these days. The reporter's first question about timing was adroitly dodged. Another about his guest list of fellow competitors was also discarded. Might Harry Reid be on that guest list? Another pertinent question was why White House aides were Tweeting about 'skeet birthers' right after the pic was released when it was CNN who asked the first question. Finally is there any video? After all, there was video of JFK from 50 years ago.
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