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Trump Comments about Venezuela's Opposition Leader; Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) is Interviewed about Venezuela; A Look at Oil Futures; Mary Ellen O'Connell is Interviewed about Venezuela; New Information in Uvalde Cop Trial. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired January 05, 2026 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:32:54]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. raid and capture of Maduro and his wife has left a power vacuum inside Venezuela. Could it be filled by Maria Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela's opposition movement? Machado, who escaped the country and accepted the Nobel Peace Prize last month, praised the U.S. capture of Maduro. But President Trump declined to endorse her, saying she, quote, "doesn't have the respect to lead the country."

CNN chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto joining me now.

I know that she and others were rejoicing, even praising Trump for the move that they made on Maduro. But now you have these words. You've spoken with one of Machado's top advisers. How are they seeing this at this hour?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Sara, they won't say it, but I think you can reasonably describe the Venezuelan opposition as swinging in the wind this morning because they have quite carefully cultivated the relationship with the Trump administration in the run- up to Saturday night's operation, but also since then, careful not to get on the wrong side of President Trump and expressed quite publicly that they would support action to remove Maduro. They said it before, and now they've said it after this operation. But as you said, President Trump, quite explicitly, said she's not his person to run the country, Maria Corina Machado or Edmundo Gonzalez, who the U.S. and other observers of the 2024 presidential election said were the -- he was the actual winner of that election. So, it contradicts the president's claim that she or the opposition doesn't have support because, in that election, they very much did have public support.

So, I spoke to David Smolansky last night. He's an advisor to Maria Corina Machado. And I asked him, I said, where does this leave you now? And what's your response to hearing the president say Machado has no support?

Have a listen to his answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID SMOLANSKY, VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION POLITICIAN: With respect to President Trump, Maria Corina Machado is the most trusted leader in Venezuela.

[08:35:02]

And I don't have any doubt that she's going to be with President-elect Edmundo Gonzalez, the leaders of the rebuilding of Venezuela where obviously the U.S. is going to be our main allies, and we will have plenty of other allies in Latin America and Europe and beyond.

But Maria Corina Machado is a leader who is out of this world, and she's got support for -- from almost every Venezuelan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Out of this world support, he says. That's certainly not what President Trump said. I'm told that the opposition has had contact with the Trump administration since the operation on Saturday night. But again, Sara, it is not clear that they have a path forward, at least with U.S. support here. And right now, of course, Maduro's vice president is now the president of Venezuela.

SIDNER: I mean, what does that mean now that you've got this situation where, as you said, the leader of the opposition, who had what looked like very large support from the Venezuelans, swinging in the wind, as you put it, and there are conversations clearly being had about the vice president of the country that -- under Maduro, who has basically said, we want Maduro back. He must be brought back. Where does that leave the United States in trying to negotiate with whom now?

SCIUTTO: Well, it raises very hard questions as to whether democracy is a priority for this operation, right? I mean in the run-up to it, those who supported action, some Republicans, even some of the administration to remove Maduro said, you know, we have to restore democracy in the country. But now you have a situation where those who were chosen by the democratic process in the most recent election seem to be out of luck, right, at least from the administration or the president's perspective. And you have a person who is, listen, in the Maduro camp now running the country.

One thing President Trump said a lot in recent days or, well, recent hours since the operation, talked a lot about oil. He hasn't mentioned much about democracy or even about the political prisoners in that country. So, you know, that might give an indication as to what the priorities are for Trump right now.

SIDNER: Well, he has certainly threatened the vice president, who's in place right now in the country, that if she doesn't cooperate there will be consequences. Potentially more military consequences.

There is so much to unpack here.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SIDNER: I'm so glad that you're here with us this morning, and that you have the conversations that you're having, and we will certainly check back in with you.

Jim Sciutto, thank you so much. Do appreciate it.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now for more on all of this is Democratic Congresswoman Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania. She sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Congresswoman, thank you for being here.

I want to jump off of something that you said this weekend after this operation, this capture of Maduro and his wife. Do you think that President Trump just started a war?

REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): Sadly, it appears he has. And in his statement to the press, he said this was a military operation. So, it was incredibly troubling to me that the president did it in this way.

And I want to make sure I say that I have no love loss for Maduro. Good riddance to him. May he be brought to justice. But the way the president has gone about this has been very chaotic. Not the military piece. The military did a brilliant job. But the president literally dropped into a sovereign nation, executed on this warrant, pulled the leader out with no plan for the next day.

BOLDUAN: Marco Rubio says that they did not need to tell Congress beforehand. His argument being that, one, he said he was concerned about leaks, but that falls apart pretty quick. But his argument is that this is a law enforcement action, what took place.

Let me play this for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: This is not an invasion. We didn't occupy a country. This was an arrest operation. This is a law enforcement operation. He was arrested on the ground in Venezuela by FBI agents, read his rights and removed from the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Congresswoman, what do you say to that?

DEAN: He's at odds with his own president. That's very, very troubling to me. What the president said was this was a military operation. Rubio got to the mic right after him and tried to make it about a police administration.

This is what is one of the most troubling things, the administration does not have its story straight. As planned as this was, as much as the military planned for weeks, as Chairman Caine talked about, and exquisitely brought this about, but they didn't come to Congress. And for Rubio to say either we couldn't brief Congress on it, the risk of leaks, you've seen the reporting. And when the president was speaking at the press conference, I wondered out loud, did he go to the oil companies?

[08:40:04]

Did the oil companies get briefed before the attack? And it turns out, apparently, at least some of them were briefed, and yet they did not brief Congress.

You know, Kate, over the weekend I had a chance to be on a closed call with Foreign Affairs Committee Saturday evening, and then yesterday our caucus had a closed call. And I thought, what a shame that this president and the people who surround him are so inept that they didn't come to Congress. We have deep experience in both the House and the Senate with foreign affairs, with obviously military affairs, with obviously intelligence. And this administration just, in a cowboy way, went it alone with no plan for the future.

And the president said, we're going to run it. What in God's name does that mean? Pretty clearly we don't know what that means. They don't know what that means.

BOLDUAN: Venezuela is a long way from Pennsylvania. That does not -- I'm not saying that in a way to say that it does not impact your constituents at all, but are you hearing from your constituents about this operation?

DEAN: Sure. Absolutely. Very concerned. It seems very troubling. The going in, not advising Congress. Remember, our constitutional authority around waging of war. And -- but they're also very concerned that the president claims he's going to run another country when he's failing to run this one to their satisfaction. And I wonder what his failing poll numbers speak to taking this action now.

My constituents care about the fact that it's January 5th, and many of them have just lost the ability to pay for their own health care. They still see their grocery prices rising. They see their utility prices rising. So, housing, you name it, they care about the president running this country, not trying to have some dominance in the hemisphere.

Another thing that really strikes me about this is the president is so malleable. He's somebody who wants the Peace Prize, and yet he's not conducting himself in a way that is creating peace. He wants to be grand and larger than life. And I think through this action he just made himself lesser and smaller because what signal did this send to Russia, to Putin? How do we talk about Putin getting out of Ukraine when we just took that action? What message did it send to China?

So -- and, sadly, we have a president who is shrinking in terms of world influence before our eyes. And Congress needs to get a handle on that. And we will.

BOLDUAN: Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, thank you for coming in this morning.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, taking a look at stock futures this morning. Just a short period before the opening bell. You can see basically flat oil futures slipped over the weekend with everything happening in Venezuela.

Let's get to CNN's Matt Egan.

So, a little bit, futures down. What do the oil markets think about what's happening? Are they going to get flooded with new oil or are they nervous that it's disrupted? Which?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, John, look, I mean the events in Venezuela over the weekend were just stunning and dramatic, but you'd never know that by just looking at the reaction in the oil market. Prices have barely budged. Yes, a little bit higher, but still very cheap at -- U.S. oil at just $58 a barrel.

And this may be a little bit surprising given that Venezuela is an oil rich country, right? We're talking about a nation that has more proven oil reserves than any other on the planet, right? More than the U.S. More than Canada. More than even Saudi Arabia.

However, I do think that this reaction, or almost non-reaction, from the oil market does make sense because despite all of that oil that's in the ground currently, Venezuela accounts for just about one percent of world oil production. It's really a drop in the bucket, and it means that existing oil flows are not really at risk.

And, in fact, in the longer run, if Venezuela does stabilize, western oil companies, they could be convinced to re-enter Venezuela. That's a big if, especially at low oil prices. But that would actually be something that would drive prices even lower.

BERMAN: Yes, so it's a little mixed signals there from the oil market.

EGAN: Yes.

BERMAN: All right, what about this year in general for gas prices for American drivers, because there is some good news there.

EGAN: Yes, absolutely. Look, last year prices were remarkably under control. And the thinking is that Venezuela is not going to change that situation.

Now, GasBuddy is out with these brand-new forecasts, shared first with CNN, where they are projecting an annual average of just $2.97 a gallon for gasoline this year. Now, that would be the fourth year in a row of falling gas prices, a major improvement from 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. In fact, this would be the lowest since 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, GasBuddy expects even lower prices in middle America.

[08:45:04]

They see the -- an average of $2.75 or below in ten different U.S. states, including Alabama, Missouri, Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma as well.

So, why is this happening? Again, it's all about the price of oil, right? Prices, despite all of the uncertainties around the world, oil prices are still really low. Last year was the worst year for oil since 2020. The Energy Department's forecasting arm, they're projecting a price of just $51 this year. That would be a significant improvement even from last year, which, again, was cheap.

And look, as always, something could happen to change this, right? If Venezuela leads to broader instability, that could maybe cause oil prices to go back up. But for now, John, the thinking is that gas is going to continue to be a bright spot on the affordability front.

BERMAN: Always feels good when you drive up to the pump and it's around $3 or less than $3.

EGAN: Yes. Absolutely.

BERMAN: Really good.

All right, Matt Egan, thank you very much.

EGAN: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Sara.

SIDNER: All right, ahead, one person is in custody after an incident at Vice President J.D. Vance's Ohio home. New video showing broken windows at the home. Authorities still trying to determine if this was a targeted incident.

And this morning, ten people have been convicted of cyber harassing France's first lady, Brigitte Macron. The latest we're learning on that. Those stories ahead.

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[08:50:19]

SIDNER: There are so many pressing questions remaining this morning on what Trump meant when he said the U.S. would, quote, "run Venezuela." In a move that is sending shock waves through the region, U.S. officials have sidelined Nobel Peace Prize winning opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. She has called for the widely recognized winner of Venezuela's 2024 election, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, to be installed. Instead, U.S. officials zeroing in on Maduro's own vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, to run the country. Trump insisted a threat against acting President Rodriguez Sunday, telling "The Atlantic," quote, "if she doesn't do what's right, she's going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro."

Joining me now is Mary Ellen O'Connell, a law expert in international law at the University of Notre Dame.

First of all, can you just talk about hearing the president say that she's going to be paying a very big price, bigger than Maduro, what that could possibly mean?

MARY ELLEN O'CONNELL, PROFESSOR, THE LAW SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AND EXPERT ON INTERNATIONAL LAW: It's very hard to understand what the president means on many points with respect to U.S. action in Venezuela. Very, very concerning. He seems to be threatening a person who is the best choice right now to lead Venezuela because she has some control and perhaps can prevent a widespread outbreak of chaos and so forth. But the president is continuing his unlawful interference with a foreign sovereign country when he dictates to that person who's in a leadership position to do what he wants or else, we don't know. Plainly, clear violations of international law involved in so many respects, but this one is another clear one.

SIDNER: I want to ask you about what the Trump administration is using. They are pointing to the Noriega case in Panama and a 1989 legal opinion about the invasion there, which claimed that a president, quote, "had inherent constitutional authority" to order the FBI to take people into custody in foreign countries, even if it violated international law to do so.

Is that the perfect example that legally justifies the U.S. action here?

O'CONNELL: Well, that memo by Bill Barr is very controversial. The United States should never be adopting a policy that is in violation of international law. This country, the United States, depends on international law. All those trade treaties that President Trump is trying to reach with other countries, they depend on treaties, basic agreements that are governed by international law. If the U.S. is riding roughshod over those same principles in other areas, countries will not trust us. They are increasingly showing their distrust. They will not join up with us in common coalitions to achieve the sorts of ends that we want, including security. And that's a very worrying thing for the United States.

President Trump is isolating the United States from the countries we should be in great connection with, the other democracies, those countries that are committed to the rule of law. But when you press an outdated, flawed memo like Bill Barr's to say that we're going to take sitting heads of government out of their countries by force and then put them before our courts and pay no attention to international law on these issues, why would other countries want to have anything to do with us? So, this is -- this is a very wrong-headed policy.

I believe that Maduro and his wife and other Venezuelan officials will have better representation, better defense counsel than perhaps Noriega did in 1989. They will argue that they have immunity under international law. It will take a brave U.S. court to support that position, but that will be a major defense that Maduro will put forward and the international community will support because this is a law that protects the leaders of every country, including President Trump likes to talk about his own presidential immunity. Well, he gets that from international law. Other countries say they will respect it, and we should be leading in respecting that kind of principle.

SIDNER: Well, shortly we are going to see the former president of Venezuela in court, and we'll see how this all plays out fairly quickly.

Mary Ellen O'Connell, thank you so much for coming on.

John.

BERMAN: All right, new this morning. Today the company that makes Wegovy is introducing a once-a-day pill in the United States.

[08:55:05]

The lower doses start at $149 a month for people paying cash. That's a big drop from the injectable version, which costs around $349 for the lowest dose. The company says the pill should be easier to get after years of high prices and shortages.

Sources tell CNN that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is reconsidering his bid for a third term. He's expected to announce his decision later this morning. CNN is reporting that Governor Walz spoke to Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar yesterday as she considers whether to jump into the race if he does not run. CNN reached out to both Walz and Klobuchar for comment, but we haven't heard back. Governor Walz has faced increased scrutiny recently over allegations of fraud in his state.

In Paris, ten people have been convicted of harassing France's first lady, Brigitte Macron, online. Prosecutors say they spread false claims that she was born male. The ruling is a win for Macrons as they also pursue a U.S. defamation case against Candace Owens, who pushed the same rumors. All ten defendants received suspended sentences for what the court called malicious attacks.

This morning, at least five counties in northern California remain under a flood watch after downpours and high tide triggered flooding, road closures and trapped some drivers in their cars. In the San Francisco Bay area, heavy rains coincided with record-breaking king tides, which only happen when the moon is in its closest position to the earth. Forecasters say rain could remain a threat through the end of the week.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: So, this morning, jury selection is set to begin in the trial of a former Uvalde police officer. Former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales was the first officer who responded as the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School unfolded. He now faces 29 counts of abandoning and endangering a child. And this morning, there is new CNN reporting on what Gonzales was allegedly told minutes before the gunman entered the building.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz has this exclusive new reporting. He's joining us now as we prepare for a very emotional big day there in Texas.

Tell us more about what you've learned, Shimon.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, so we've been obviously working on this story for over three years now. We've been able to obtain all kinds of information. And just recently we started focusing, in preparation for this trial, on what Adrian Gonzales did that day and how the day came about charging him. And it's clear what she's alleging, based on the evidence that we have reviewed that has not been publicly released, but we have obtained through sources, is that there is a school employee who seems to indicate to him where the shooter was. There are a series of questions that Adrian Gonzales answered the day after the shooting from the Texas Rangers in an interview. We have obtained some of that. Here is some of what he said in response to their questions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADRIAN GONZALES: Take cover, guys. Take cover. Shots fired.

Under my radar. I don't know if I break. I said, hey, shots fired, shots fired at Robb School. And then I tell them, you know, the general location of where he's at. So, I start moving up, trying, you know, trying to get from in front of my vehicle to the back. There was -- the only thing that was the tree and then a building.

So, I started walking towards there. And then I see an officer, one of the PD officers coming. And then all of a sudden I see like glass coming out and firing. You know, somebody firing and glass, you know, a couple of rounds come out of the glass. And I told the guy -- told the PD officer, get back, it's coming from over there.

He's going to be on the west school -- on the west side of the school by those vehicles. He's wearing all black. All black.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As the rounds are being fired, is there a reason why you don't fire?

GONZALES: Because I don't see who's -- where the rounds are coming from.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That way (inaudible).

GONZALES: Yes. I know they're coming from the back over here. I just don't know where they're coming from.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And so one of the things that prosecutors here are alleging is that he did not, did not delay or try to distract the shooter in any way. And that is sort of what makes up the 29 counts of endangerment here in that he didn't go towards the gunfire initially, despite being told possibly where the shooter was. He didn't go towards that direction. Instead, he stayed in the back and entered through a different location, not the location the gunman went through.

So, this is what jurors are going to be hearing eventually once this case gets underway. His own statements are a key piece of evidence in this case. There's that school employee who potentially could testify about her interaction with Adrian Gonzales on the day of the shooting.

We've been watching here as hundreds, I mean hundreds of people have been showing up here for jury duty here today. They hope prosecutors and the defense team, that they could get a jury seated by today and have witness testimony begin tomorrow.

I ran into some of the witnesses last night. The teacher who survived, Arnulfo Reyes, he is here.

[09:00:03]

Amy Marin, who was the school employee, a teacher as well, who was accused of leaving the door open, she is here