Last week Trump accused Barack Obama of plotting to take guns from their owners, telling a crowd in South Carolina: “You know, the president is thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away.”

He then stood by the claim, telling CNN: “I’ve heard that he wants to. And I heard it, I think, on your network. Somebody said that that’s what he’s thinking about.”

He then said he’d heard it from “numerous networks” and read the claim “in the papers”. “My source is the papers,” he said, “So you know, they’re pretty good sources.”

“My whole life really has been a ‘no’ and I’ve fought through it,” Trump, the son of a New York real estate millionaire, told a voter who asked whether he had ever experienced rejection. “It has not been easy for me,” he said. “I started off in Brooklyn. My father gave me a small loan of $1m. I came into Manhattan, and I had to pay him back. I had to pay him back with interest.”