White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, admitted he wasn't familiar with, “I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of [Bernie Sanders] record,” on gun control. | Getty White House won't commit to supporting Sanders over guns Obama spokesman also says Sen. Heidi Heitkamp won't get Obama's support.

The campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton erupted in a back-and-forth Friday over President Barack Obama's new pledge not to support anti-gun control candidates — and whether that pledge ruled out Obama backing Sanders if wins the Democratic nomination.

The sparring — in the form of dueling conference calls and a television appearance — came as White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Friday that Obama would have to review Sanders' record on guns before committing to support the Vermont senator.


“If Democratic voters across the country confirm that he is the Democratic nominee, then I’m confident that we’re going to spend some time here learning about his record and learning about what is on his agenda to make that decision,” Earnest said Friday at the daily White House press briefing.

Asked about the president’s pledge made in a New York Times op-ed Thursday—that he wouldn’t support any candidate who wasn’t for common-sense gun control, including the gun manufacturer liability provision that Sanders has voted against—Earnest said it wasn’t intended as “any sort of secret or subtle signal to demonstrate a preference in the presidential primary.”

Earnest said he wasn’t familiar with all the particulars of Sanders’ record on guns, but was gratified to hear that the senator’s recently expressed openness to revisiting the gun manufacturer liability.

“That’s exactly the goal here,” Earnest said. “We want people to change their minds.”

But while Sanders and his campaign staff have sought to play down any differences with the president on guns, Earnest said that at least to him, that was currently an open question.

"I would say that there's about zero daylight between the president and Senator Bernie Sanders," Sanders manager Jeff Weaver said Friday afternoon during a campaign press call about New Hampshire primary strategy happening at the same time as the briefing.

Earnest would not go so far himself, saying only “I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of his record.”

The Clinton campaign announced a special press call Friday afternoon for its chairman John Podesta to take issue with Weaver’s “zero daylight” claim.

“When Senator Sanders’ campaign attempts to say there’s zero daylight between Sen. Sanders and the president and Sen. Sanders and Hillary Clinton,” Podesta said, “That’s just not true.”

Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs did not respond to a request for comment about what Earnest said, but in a separate conference call after Podesta's, Weaver told reporters "the Clinton people obviously have not read the news clips."

"This is old news," Weaver said, ticking off Sanders' current positions on gun control, saying Sanders backs the president's latest gun control moves, and recalling his statement in October that he would be willing to review the 2005 gun manufacturer vote in question. But he did not say whether Sanders would denounce that vote.

Friday's Clinton offensive, he alleged, came because the former secretary of state didn't want to debate Wall Street regulation or equal pay legislation with the Vermont senator.

Before long, however, Clinton herself responded, phoning into MSNBC's Hardball on Friday night.

"The NRA wrote this bill that said no one can sue a gun maker or a gun seller and called it the most significant piece of pro-gun legislation in 20 years," she said of the 2005 measure. "And when it really mattered, Senator Sanders voted with the gun lobby and I voted against the gun lobby."

"Maybe it's time for Senator Sanders to stand up and say, 'I got this one wrong,'" she added. "But he hasn't. He's defended his vote time and again. He said he would consider changes to the law, but, you know, that was three months ago."

Earnest also said that among the people who would likely lose the president’s support is Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who was a crucial lost vote for the White House on its 2013 gun control push, but who’s also voted with the White House on trade fast-track last spring. Obama also promised to campaign for Democrats under fire for voting for fast-track, and Heitkamp is one of several members of Congress who meet both criteria—though she’s also from a state where Obama’s not very popular anyway.

As for whether Obama would support pro-gun control Republicans like Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Earnest came just short of saying no.

“I wouldn’t rule it out, but these kind of elections are a test,” Earnest said, predicting that Democratic candidates would have more amenable positions on gun control, and if Republicans were where he wanted them to be, he’d go to the Democrat anyway based on other criteria.

“If both candidates support the kind of common sense gun safety measures that the president does,” Earnest said, “then that’s great.”