Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Yes, He Did: Obama Shoots Skeet

President Obama shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David in Maryland on Aug. 4.
Pete Souza
/
The White House
President Obama shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David in Maryland on Aug. 4.

The White House has released proof that President Obama really did shoot skeet — at least once — at the Maryland presidential retreat, last summer.

There'd been some disbelief among gun rights supporters this week when Obama claimed in an interview with The New Republic, "Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time." Skeptical Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., quickly challenged him to a competition and predicted she would beat him.

Maybe.

The question this week was whether Obama actually did fire a weapon. As Mark wrote, Fact Checker couldn't decide whether the claim was true, and issued a " Verdict Pending." There weren't any photos of him doing it, as there are of the president playing basketball. Fox weighed in later, saying it had a source that the president had shot skeet at least once. Now there's evidence of that from Aug. 12, 2012. Perhaps the next question is one Rep. Blackburn would like to ask: How good is he?

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Korva Coleman is a newscaster for NPR.
KUER is listener-supported public radio. Support this work by making a donation today.