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Tom McCarthy and Scott Bixby (earlier); Nicky Woolf (now)

Protests at Trump rally and Obama speaks out on guns – as it happened

US President Barack Obama participates in a live town hall event on reducing gun violence
US President Barack Obama participates in a live town hall event on reducing gun violence Photograph: AUDE GUERRUCCI / POOL/EPA

You can read our latest article on Obama’s gun control town hall – and the NRA response – here:

Obama and Trump's events have both finished.

The difference in style could not have been more stark.

At Trump’s rally in Bernie Sanders’ hometown of Burlington, Vermont, protesters were thrown out en masse - and people who did not swear allegiance to Trump were not allowed in. A bombastic Trump said that gun free zones in schools were “bait” for “sickos.” Outside, a large crowd of protesters gathered, chanting Bernie Sanders’ name.

At the same time, president Obama held a townhall meeting on CNN to discuss gun violence with a range of audience questions from people across the spectrum, from a rape victim who wanted to be reassured that she would still be able to protect herself, to a sheriff who wanted to know if he would be able to enforce the law, to Mark Kelly, the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the representative who was shot in Arizona in a mass shooting attack.

The president’s cool demeanor frayed only once; when challenged over his use of the term “conspiracy” over whether his government wanted to take people’s guns from them en masse. “Yes! I think it’s fair to call it a conspiracy [theory]!” he said.

Earlier in the day he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times pledging not to support or campaign for any candidate who did not support gun control legislation.

Obama has finished his townhall

“Some of the proposals I’m making mightnot be as effective as others,” he says.

“But let’s not assume every few weeks there’s a mass shooting; every few months there’s one that gets national publicity; every day people get shot on the streets and nobody hears about it.”

“We can do better, if we come together,” he ends.

Tre Bosley, whose brother Terrell was shot and killed 10 years ago, says he’s lost “countless friends and family members” to gun violence. “Most of us aren’t thinking of our life on a long term scale. Most of us are thinking minute-to-minute.” He asks what advice the president has for him.

“You know - when I see you, I think about my own youth,” Obama says. “I probably wasn’t that different from you. But I lived in a more forgiving environment. If I screwed up, there wasn’t much risk of being shot.”

He pauses. “And - that’s how all kids should grow up. Wherever they live.”

Cooper asks about Obama’s New York Times pledge not to support any candidate who does not support gun control reform.

“The majority of people in this country are a lot more sensible than those in Washington,” he says. “And the reason Washington doesn’t work well, is the loudest, shrillest voices, the least compromising, the most powerful, or those with the most money have the most influence.”

The way Washington changes is when people vote. The way we break the deadlock on this issue is when ... the NRA doesn’t have a stranglehold on congress.

Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in a mass shooting event in Arizona, asks “with 350m guns, if the federal govt wanted to confiscate those objects, how would they do that.”

“First of all, every time I see Gabby, I’m thrilled, because I visited her in the hospital,” Obama says. “As we left the hospital to go to a memorial service, we had word that she opened her eyes for the first time.” Giffords is here too.

Obama says mistrust of the federal government “is in our DNA.” He calls it a conspiracy - which Cooper disputes. For the first time, Obama seems visibly angry. “Yes! I think it’s fair to call it a conspiracy [theory]!”

“It’s a false notion circulated with political intent, which prevents us coming together to make us safer. The notion that we can’t agree on some things while not agreeing on others, and the notion is, well, the president secretly wants to do x - would mean that we’d be paralysed on everything.”

Outside Trump’s event, a large crowd of Bernie Sanders supporters is gathering, the Guardian’s Ben Jacobs reports.

“There are conspiracy theories floating around the internet all the time,” Obama says. He points to Jade Helm, the training exercise in Texas. “People were convinced it was the start of martial law.”

Then, he starts talking about smart gun technologies - weapons that only work if the wearer of a certain bracelet has their hand on the trigger. He says manufacturers backed off their development after pressure from the NRA. “That doesn’t make sense to me. I would think people would want the choice,” he says. “It has not been developed primarily because it has been blocked by the NRA. So what we proposed was, we’ll do some of the research, and then give everybody a choice, because I think there will in fact be a market for that.”

CNN just replayed this footage of Obama’s tearful moment recalling the Newtown massacre a couple of days ago.

Obama tears up during gun control speech

Speaking to Cooper, Obama says that when he visited Newtown two days after the attack, that was the only time he’d ever seen Secret Service members cry on duty.

“As I enter into my last year as president, I could not be prouder of the work that we’ve done, but it also makes me really humble. A lot of the work you do is just to incrementally make things better,” he says, speaking with unusual candor.

Whenever he talks about the “mischaracterisation” of his views on the subject, his frustration is palpable.

Trump, too, is addressing the question of guns. And he’s come to very different conclusions to the president.

The contrasting delivery style between the two men is stark.

“You know what a gun free zone is to a sicko?” Trump just said, according to Ben on the scene. “That’s bait!” He pledges to get rid of them in schools on his first day in office.

Back to Obama, who’s talking about the Newtown massacre. “Everybody here is in favour of going after criminals ... creating an environment where kids don’t turn into criminals,” Obama says. “What we have to [also] do is make sure it’s not so easy for them to get access to deadly weapons.”

Meanwhile, in Burlington, the scene at Trump’s rally appears to be worsening, with more and more protesters - and those suspected of being protesters - being thrown out into the Vermont cold

Updated

“Do you think a good guy with a gun can be a bulwark against a bad guy with a gun,” Cooper asks. Throws the question to Kimberly Corban, a rape survivor, who says that being able to buy a firearm is “a basic responsibility as a parent at this point.”

“First of all, obviously, your story is horrific,” Obama says. He praises her strength in telling it. “I just want to repeat that there’s nothing we’ve proposed that would make it harder for you to get a firearm.”

“There really is nothing we’re proposing that makes it harder for you to purchase a firearm if you need one.”

“There are always questions about whether or not having a firearm in the home protects you from that kind of violence,” he adds. “I’m not sure we’re going to be able to resolve it.”

The first question for President Obama comes from Taya Kyle, the widow of Chris Kyle, on whom the book American Sniper was based. She worries that the laws will not be followed by the murderers. “Would it be a better use of our time to give people hope in a different way?” She says that America is at an all-time low for murder rate.

Obama says that the low violent crime rate “is not something that we celebrate enough ... most cities are much safer than they were.” He disputes the idea that the reason for that is high gun ownership, saying that the places with higher gun ownership are often places where the violent crime rate hasn’t dropped as much.

But, he tells Taya, “you will still be able to buy a firearm.”

“We’re trying to do something modest, and the response is that we’re trying to take away everybody’s guns,” Obama says. He says his position has been “mischaracterised.”

He laments the NRA’s lack of attendance. “We have invited them repeatedly, but if you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over the top - and not acknowledging the fact that there is no other consumer item we purchase ... theres nothing else in our lives that we purchase that we don’t try to make it a little safer if we can.” He points to the fact that traffic fatalities have reduced drastically in his lifetime.

“The notion that we would not apply the same basic principles to gun ownership ... or the notion that everything we do is somehow a plot to take away guns, that contradicts what we do to try to create a better life for Americans in any other area of life.”

He says he’s happy to meet with the NRA, but “the conversation has to be based on truth.”

Now the president is talking about his executive action on Tuesday to shrink the private sale loophole. “We want to put everybody on notice that the def of doing bus - which means you have to run a background check - is if you are making a profit and selling multiple guns.”

Cooper points out that this is, perhaps, not specific enough.

“Ultimately, it’s up to Congress to set up a system that is efficient,” Obama says. “The fact that the system may not catch every single person,” he says, is outweighed by the fact that it could save lives.

Back to Obama. “I respect the Second Amendment, I respect the right to bear arms. I respect sportsmanship,” he says. “...but when you’re losing 30,000 people to firearms, two thirds of them suicides...”

He says he wants to combine gun safety with sensible background checks. “If we can take that 30,000 to, say, 28,000, that’s two thousand families who don’t have to go through what the families of Newtown had to go through,” he says.

In Burlington, a brief interruption to Trump’s speech:

“Have you ever owned a gun?” Cooper asks the president. “I have never owned a gun,” Obama replies.

He says that other than hunting for wild pig in Hawaii, where he grew up, there isn’t the culture of hunting and sportsmanship that there is in other parts of the country.

Asked whether he’s coming for people’s guns, Obama points out that gun sales have gone up during his seven years of presidency. “I’ve been good for gun manufacturers,” he says, a little bitterly.

Obama takes the stage for gun control townhall

The president is taking part in a live townhall meeting organised by CNN and moderated by Anderson Cooper, to discuss gun control.

Earlier today, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times to say that he would not “campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common-sense gun reform.”

Cooper said that “one voice you won’t hear from tonight is the National Rifle Association,” saying that the organisation was asked to attend but declined.

Trump is still speaking in Burlington, Vermont.

The Trump campaign has also released a statement about the non-supporters being turned away at the door of his event in Burlington, Vermont this evening.

The statement, which is attributed directly to Trump, reads:

We have more than 20,000 people that showed up for 1,400 spots. I’m taking care of my people, not people who don’t want to vote for me or are undecided. They are loyal to me and I am loyal to them.

Great story from Danny Yadron on a White House mission to enlist the help of Silicon Valley in ‘disrupting’ radicalism.

The White House will attempt to enlist Silicon Valley’s major technology firms in its efforts to combat terrorism on Friday when a delegation of the most senior intelligence officials fly to California to meet with executives from companies including Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, YouTube and others.

A copy of the agenda seen by the Guardian indicates the White House seeks more or less to channel Silicon Valley’s talent into its war against Islamic State and other extremist groups.

It states: “In what ways can we use technology to help disrupt paths to radicalization to violence, identify recruitment patterns, and provide metrics to help measure our efforts to counter radicalization to violence?”

The delegation will be led by White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, and include NSA chair Admiral Mike Rogers and James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

You can read the whole story here.

Trump is really gearing up the call-and-response.

Donald Trump begins speaking

The New York real-estate mogul has begun speaking to the crowd in Burlington.

He begins by praising the Vermont air, our correspondent Ben Jacobs, who is on the scene, reports.

Then, he begins listing the names of rival candidates who have dropped out of the race. The crowd shouts “gone”.

President Obama has written an op-ed in the New York Times about gun violence, in the wake of his executive actions on Tuesday.

Key to the article is a pledge not to “campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common-sense gun reform.”

Thanks to the gun lobby’s decades of efforts, Congress has blocked our consumer products safety experts from being able to require that firearms have even the most basic safety measures. They’ve made it harder for the government’s public health experts to conduct research on gun violence. They’ve guaranteed that manufacturers enjoy virtual immunity from lawsuits, which means that they can sell lethal products and rarely face consequences. As parents, we wouldn’t put up with this if we were talking about faulty car seats. Why should we tolerate it for products — guns — that kill so many children each year?

You can read the whole article here.

At Donald Trump’s rally in Burlington, Vermont, staff members are asking people for a verbal affirmation of support for the candidate before they are allowed inside.

Notably, that’s pretty much the exact same method as the one Trump proposed for distinguishing Muslim from Christian refugees at the border.

The Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, has caused outrage after blaming his state’s herion problems on “guys by the name D-Money; Smoothie; Shiftie,” adding that “incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave.”

In a slightly panicked statement, a spokesperson for the governor has denied that LePage’s comments were about race:

The incident was streamed online. You can watch the video here:

Governor LePage

Updated

Trump campaign "manhandles" Bernie supporters

The Trump campaign has kept at least two Bernie Sanders supporters from attending the rally in Burlington and “manhandled” them in the process.

Tim Farr of Burlington had waited in line since 10 AM to see Trump’s appearance in his hometown. The well spoken young man was wearing a Bernie Sanders pin as was his mother. As they entered the auditorium, Farr told the Guardian that he and his mother were grabbed by Trump’s security and “forcibly ejected from the building.”

Despite having a ticket to the event, Farr was told “this is a private event, only Trump supporters are allowed in.”

He said he and his mother were grabbed before they could say anything. Even though they tried to insist “we weren’t here to protest, just here to see Donald Trump.” It didn’t matter. Farr said “we were wearing this [Bernie Sanders] pin and we were the enemy.”

Farr thought this was not “Vermont values,” and never experienced anything like it before his life. He said mournfully “Bernie would allow Trump supporters in his evens.” Farr stayed outside the rally to protest in frustration. However, his mother went home in tears.

He also told the Guardian that he was still considering whether or not to file a police report for simple assault.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

My colleague Lauren Gambino has discovered this calendar, of sexy Bernie Sanders supporters. (“Warning: may cause your polls to tighten”)

Perfect for a late Christmas present for a loved-one or family member. Or just treat yourself!

Meanwhile, back in Burlington, Vermont:

Someone appears to have taught whoever operates Paul Ryan’s official twitter feed how to make gifs.

And roughly what will happen when the bill reaches the president’s desk, illustrated in another gif:

Donald Trump may be drawing a large crowd in Bernie Sanders’ back yard right now, but the Vermont senator has that crucial ice-cream endorsement, the New York Times’ Jess Bidgood reveals.

And following Trump’s comments about Ted Cruz’s Canadian heritage, similar disturbing allegations are beginning to surface about Trump’s own embarrassing links north of the border.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill:

In what he’s calling an “enrollment ceremony,” speaker Paul Ryan has just signed the bill, passed by the house of representatives last month, which repeals Obamacare.

It will now go to the President’s desk, where it will be pretty much immediately vetoed.

Donald Trump’s rally in Burlington, Vermont hasn’t even started yet, and he’s already galvanising local entrepreneurship.

Hillary Clinton, who is currently on a secretive fundraising trip on the West Coast, has received an important endorsement - from Planned Parenthood’s PAC.

The organisation made the announcement on Twitter just over an hour ago:

In a statement just now, Clinton said she that she was “honored” to have the group’s endorsement.

She continued:

There has never been a more important election when it comes to women’s health and reproductive rights—and Planned Parenthood’s patients, providers, and advocates across the country are a crucial line of defense against the dangerous agenda being advanced by every Republican candidate for president.

This week was a jarring reminder of what’s at stake in 2016. For the first time ever, the United States House and Senate passed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal the Affordable Care Act. Thankfully, President Obama will exercise his veto power to stop the Republicans from cutting off women, men, and young people from vital health care services at Planned Parenthood—including cancer screenings, well-woman exams, and STI and HIV tests—and taking away health coverage from 18 million people. Any of the Republican candidates will proudly sign that bill into law if they win. We can’t let that happen.

Good afternoon! Nicky Woolf in sunny Berkeley, California, taking over from Scott Bixby in chilly New York City.

The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs is currently in line waiting for a Donald Trump rally in Bernie Sanders’ home town, and makes an interesting observation:

In fact, he wouldn’t be the first to observe the strange phenomenon of Trump/Sanders support crossover.

It seems counterintuitive - there seems at first glance to be little common political ground between the two - but at previous Trump rallies, supporters have been quoted by journalists as picking Vermont senator Bernie as their second-choice.

Hot Air chalks it up to the “blue collar coalition” both candidates are developing; moreover, Sanders has in the past publicly appealed to Trump supporters to back him instead, and even instructed his canvassers with specific scripts to lure Trump supporters.

Though, in this particular instance, Ben says the Bernie badge-wearers are as likely to be messing with Trump than genuinely supporting him as a second choice. But who knows - maybe once they hear him speak later on they’ll find themselves convinced.

Hillary Clinton has had it with your selfie sticks.

In an interview with Esquire Magazine, the Democratic frontrunner decried “the tyranny of the selfie” as hampering her ability to connect with voters in real life, as opposed to just their Instagram feeds.

It used to be - and I was talking to President Obama about this the other day - it used to be that you would do an event like this and then you would shake hands with people and they would talk to you. They would say, ‘I liked what you said about this’ or ‘You didn’t mention that’ or ‘Can I tell you this?’ And it was a constant learning and absorbing experience.

Now, it’s just ‘Can I take a selfie? Can I take a picture?’ People just want to capture that moment, and I just try to be accommodating.

Clinton isn’t so distressed by the ubiquity of camera phones that she won’t oblige requests for a close-up, however - when told that she has a skill for taking artful selfies, the former secretary of state said, “That’s what people ask for. If I’m going to try to get to everybody, I have to be good at it.”

Get ready for your close-up...

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, Vice President Joe Biden told a Connecticut television station that he has regretted not running for president “every day” since his October announcement in the Rose Garden that he had run out of the time “necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination.”

But despite his absence in the relatively small Democratic field, Biden told WVIT in Connecticut, the Democratic party still has “two good candidates” in play - apparently referring to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, although former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley may still hold out hope that he made Biden’s cut.

Had he entered the race, Biden seems to think that he would have had his work cut out for him, calling the state of the Republican field “absolutely crazy.”

“I promise you, I’ve spoken to three of the presidential potential nominees on the Republican side who tell me, ‘Joe, it’s crazy’,” Biden said.

Ben Carson, the flailing Republican candidate, shows how not to do it, in telling a story he has written and talked about definitely dozens of times, of how he was considered the dumbest kid in class before the world discovered his genius.

The Des Moines Register caught the moment:

Newly shaven House speaker Paul Ryan seems not to have made much news in his news conference earlier. But he did bring up Pabst beer. And announced he was “going on offense on ideas,” which – look out ideas?

Hillary Clinton began two days of closed-door meetings in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley on Thursday – two areas that account for a large portion of her donor base, Rory Carroll and Nicky Woolf report:

The former secretary of state will attend a morning event in San Gabriel on Thursday for the launch of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for Hillary, along with representative Judy Chu, the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress, who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

Staying in San Gabriel, Clinton will then attend a $2,700-per-head lunch hosted by Chu.

Read the full piece here.

Money money money! In Las Vegas on Wednesday.
Money money money! In Las Vegas on Wednesday. Photograph: Rick Wilking/Reuters

Updated

And in a third which we promise will not become a fourth consecutive Trump post, the Republican frontrunner is out with a new web spot seeking to trash Hillary Clinton by revisiting the sex scandals of Bill Clinton – culminating with a picture of Hillary Clinton next to Bill Cosby. Aie.

A rape allegation against Bill Clinton from 1978 resurfaced on Wednesday, when the accuser, Juanita Broaddrick, tweeted:

Vox got in touch with Broaddrick, who was quoted as saying:

I guess it was just seeing them on TV so much now, and her with the Benghazi [hearing].”

Speaking of Cosby, who has been accused of drugging and sexually abusing many women, Congressman Paul Gosar is to hold a news conference this afternoon to promote legislation due to be introduced this week affirming a mechanism for Cosby to be stripped of the presidential Medal of Freedom.

Updated

Trump calls for 45% tariff on Chinese goods

Economists have criticized Donald Trump’s big idea for big new tariffs on Chinese goods as potentially destructive to the world economy and as founded on the mistaken notion, which Trump often repeats, that China has conducted a long-term currency manipulation effort to undercut American manufacturers.

Today Trump put a number on his tariff proposal – and it is YUUUUUUGE. 45%, he tells the Times:

We agree with @xeni that this analysis of how Donald Trump uses language is incisive and interesting:

Cruz 'birther' controversy burbles

Ted Cruz was born in Canada to a US-citizen mother and a Cuban father. Does that make him a “natural-born citizen,” as the constitution requires for presidents?

US presidential candidate Ted Cruz handling a book by Canadian author Ted Cruz.
US presidential candidate Ted Cruz handling a book by Canadian author Ted Cruz. Photograph: Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters

More interesting than the question, perhaps, are the identities of the political leaders asking the question, who include not only Cruz’s Republican rivals for the presidential nomination, but also Republican senator and former presidential nominee John McCain, who said on an Arizona radio show that “there is a question” on whether Cruz was eligible to be president. “It’s worth looking into,” McCain said.

Donald Trump got in on the fun:

As did Rand Paul, who had this to say on Fox News radio, in comments flagged by BuzzFeed:

You know, I think without question he is qualified and would make the cut to be prime minister of Canada, absolutely without question, he is qualified and he meets the qualifications.”

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s joining in the speculation may come as less of a surprise:

Update: Marco Rubio, however, is not playing ball:

Updated

Johnson joins race on Libertarian ticket

The presidential field is supposed to be winnowing. Instead it just got more crowded – Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor, announced yesterday that he would seek the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party.

Jeb Lund raises an eyebrow writing in Comment Is Free:

In an exclusive interview with Reason on Wednesday, former New Mexico governor and former Republican Gary Johnson announced that he will again seek the Libertarian party presidential nomination in order to, among other things, ban Muslim women from wearing burqas.

Are we France now? Do we tell Lafayette that we are here?

I’m not a Libertarian, but I’m familiar with the schtick: its purpose in American politics is to decouple the Republican goal of ending taxation on the wealthy and eliminating pro-labor regulation from the party’s sex policing, religious outrage and marginal-group “othering” that makes Republicans actually electable.

Read the full piece here.

Hello and welcome to our rolling coverage of the day in US politics. This ought to be a doozy.

Bill Clinton is running around Iowa on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump is fronting on Bernie Sanders by holding a rally this evening in Sanders’ hometown of Burlington, Vermont. Our political reporter Ben Jacobs will be on the ground.

(Why can’t we get a Trump v Sanders debate out of this otherwise historically splendid election cycle? Think of the ragefun. Except a debate between the two might not work, given that they have so many policy positions in common. Maybe a televised tea summit.)

For those of you after tips on faxing, good news: a new batch of Hillary Clinton state department emails is scheduled to drop this evening.

Also tonight! Barack Obama on guns, in the form of a televised town hall. We’ll be watching that closely. On Tuesday he announced new executive actions to impose restrictions on some gun sales, prompting much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the right.

On Capitol Hill, House speaker Paul Ryan has held his first news conference of the New Year, and Congress will consider legislation to strip Bill Cosby of his presidential medal of freedom.

Best of all, Republicans are ganging up to give Ted Cruz grief about being born in Canada, in an attack started by Trump – who else – at the weekend, which was joined today by Senator John McCain and others.

It’s trolly Thursday! Thanks for joining us.

Updated

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