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Maduro Awaits Trial in Notorious U.S. Jail; Colombia Increasing Security Along Border With Venezuela; Trump Accuses Colombia of Not Doing Enough to Stop Drugs; Trump Pushes to Rebuild Oil Industry in Venezuela; Swiss Bar Hit by Deadly Fire Had Not Been Inspected in Five Years; Some Wegmans Stores Using Facial Recognition Tech. Aired 1:30- 2p ET
Aired January 06, 2026 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[13:31:37]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": President Nicolas Maduro's life of luxury as the leader of Venezuela is over and he's now living in one of the most notorious federal jails in the U.S. His new home is the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and it has been described as hell on earth. Inmates living in squalor with poor sanitation, frequent power outages, loss of heating during winter, and inadequate medical facilities.
The MDC, as its known, also has a history of overcrowding. Currently, it's housing around 1,300 inmates. Some of the current and former residents include R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Luigi Mangione. The MDC also has a history of violence. In 2024, two inmates were killed there. And in March of last year, the Department of Justice charged several inmates and a prison guard with acts of violence and with running a contraband smuggling operation.
The conditions are so poor that some judges have refused to send people there. One judge calling the MDC barbaric, while another said the facility is contemptuous of human life and dignity. Those are the conditions Maduro is facing as he awaits trial that could take years to begin. Boris?
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": After the U.S. operation to remove Maduro, Venezuela's neighbor, Colombia, is increasing security across its eastern border and its President, Gustavo Petro, fired back after President Trump threatened a potential U.S. operation there. Petro is saying that he would take up arms if the U.S. attacked his country. CNN's David Culver has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Let's get in here. Got it?
CULVER (voice-over): This is the show of force Colombian commanders want the world, and perhaps mostly Washington, to witness. CULVER: And so here it is now evening, going into late in the night, and we're about to see some of the many patrols that have sprawled out across the 1,300-plus miles of border between Colombia and Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): The government says it's now deployed some 30,000 Colombian troops to its eastern border.
CULVER: Military commanders stress that their priority is security and stability more than anything else. It may look like an escalation, but they say this is about being prepared for whatever situation might unfold. But you can't look past the timing, and that is all of this happening as scrutiny from Washington intensifies.
CULVER (voice-over): At all hours, the Colombian military increasingly present here.
CULVER: What is the priority right now?
CULVER (voice-over): Pushing back on claims from the Trump administration that they're not doing enough to stop criminal organizations and drugs from crossing the border.
LT. COL. JHONNATAN ARCOS, COLOMBIAN ARMY (through translator): The deployment of troops is to guarantee the sovereignty of the territory.
CULVER (voice-over): Adamant they're focused on guaranteeing and defending Colombia's sovereignty and primarily its citizens.
ARCOS (through translator): For the defense of the territory and especially the defense of Colombians
CULVER (voice-over): And yet despite the show of force, life here pretty normal for the moment.
CULVER: You can see steady traffic coming in from Venezuela into Colombia.
[13:35:00]
This is the Simon Bolivar Bridge. Takes you right into Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): Or out of Venezuela, in Maria's case, if only for a couple of hours.
Bolivar Bridge takes you right into Venezuela. Or out of Venezuela, in Maria's case, if only for a couple of hours. She's got a doctor's appointment in Colombia.
CULVER: [Foreign Language].
CULVER (voice-over): She's got a doctor's appointment in Venezuela.
CULVER: [Foreign Language]. She says everything is calm.
CULVER (voice-over): She's among those still living in Venezuela, willing to tell us on camera she's happier with Maduro gone. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language].
CULVER: She says as soon as Maduro became president, everything just went downhill from there. So she's hoping it can revert back to the way it was, so she says, before.
CULVER (voice-over): In a seemingly forgotten, tucked away mountain community, here in Cucuta, Colombia, many we meet dream bigger for Venezuela's future.
CULVER: And this is a community that's basically a migrant settlement.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language].
CULVER: She thinks there are more Venezuelans in this community than Colombians. Mind you, we're in Colombia.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language].
CULVER (voice-over): This family left Venezuela two years ago, intentionally keeping close to their homeland.
CULVER: Do you want to go back?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language].
CULVER: She would love to go back. That's where the bedroom is. [Foreign Language] They have running water and electricity. The neighbor has internet, and so they share it.
[Foreign Language] So this is their kitchen. They have one bedroom there.
CULVER (voice-over): Incredibly modest, but better still, she insists, than life on the other side of the border.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language].
CULVER: She said life in Venezuela was incredibly difficult. Even working, she said, you had to make choices. Do you buy clothes? Do you buy food?
CULVER (voice-over): She's among the nearly three million who've left Venezuela to settle in Colombia in recent years, believed to be the largest Venezuelan diaspora outside of Venezuela.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language].
CULVER: She said her husband wanted to stay close to their homeland, so they're just over the border. Secondly, she was worried about the journey to the U.S.
CULVER (voice-over): And yet, before returning, she, like most here, want to see lasting changes take shape.
CULVER: Do you think the U.S. can change things in Venezuela?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language].
CULVER: She does think the U.S. actually can contribute, not to do everything, but to at least make a better Venezuela, as she sees it.
CULVER (voice-over): Until then, they've made this home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language].
CULVER: She says, go back three years ago, and this was a mess. It didn't look anything like this, but the community came together, and now it's a place where a lot of the kids gather and they play.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: Our thanks to David Culver for that report. Coming up, we know President Trump wants Venezuela's oil, but getting it, far more complicated than it seems. Are U.S. energy companies on board with the president's plan? We have new CNN reporting straight ahead.
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[13:42:25]
KEILAR: Days after the capture of Nicolas Maduro, President Trump is making his plans for Venezuela more explicit. Today, "Morning Joe" Host, Joe Scarborough detailing a phone call that he had with the president that included a comparison between Venezuela and America's failed occupation of Iraq.
The president reportedly said, "The difference between Iraq and this is that Bush didn't keep the oil. We're going to keep the oil." And later this week, the U.S. Energy Secretary is expected to meet oil executives to gain their support.
A department spokesman says Secretary Chris Wright will see them at an Energy Conference in Miami to talk about investing in Venezuela, which has the world's largest oil reserves. Sources say it will be the first of many meetings to come. However, an industry source tells CNN, "The appetite for jumping into Venezuela right now is pretty low. We have no idea what the government there will look like."
We're joined now by Bob McNally, President of the consultancy, the Rapidan Group. He's a former White House energy expert. He now advises many major oil and energy firms. Start there, Bob. What are they thinking about this as an opportunity?
BOB MCNALLY, PRESIDENT, RAPIDAN GROUP: Hi, Brianna. You know, I was in the White House when we went into Iraq. I covered energy for President Bush. And President Trump is right. We were not after the oil. We were accused of that, but it was not about the oil.
President Trump has made it very clear he's doing it differently. And it is about at least getting U.S. companies back in and producing. I hope, I've been counting barrels for over 30 years. I hope that we'll see a quick ramp up in Venezuelan production. But I think when the president and his advisers talks to U.S. oil companies, executives, and analysts, I think there's going to be a mismatch between how quickly the president wants the money to flow and the oil production to grow and how quickly it will really happen.
KEILAR: Because he told NBC that oil companies would pay for the rehab of Venezuela's oil infrastructure and the U.S. government may reimburse them. He said it could take less than 18 months. Talk about that timeline. Is that realistic?
MCNALLY: That is only realistic for, let's call it, low-hanging fruits. When the oil companies go back, if they do, there will be some repairs, some maintenance, some cleanup, some water treatment facilities, little things here and there. And that could de-bottleneck some oil, let's say a few hundred thousand barrels a day, compared to the less than a million they're producing now.
[13:45:00]
So yes, there is some low-hanging fruit that in the next year or two, could lead to higher production. But the price in Venezuela is really in the coming years when we get up to a million or two million barrels a day more. And for that, we'll measure that in tens of billions of dollars and many years, really decades of investment. That won't happen in 18 months.
KEILAR: I want to play an exchange with the president from Sunday evening. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Have you spoken to the oil companies about going into Venezuela?
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Yes, I have.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Which ones? Have you received any commitments?
TRUMP: All of them, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Any commitments from the oil companies?
TRUMP: They wanted to go in so badly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you speak with them before the operation took place?
TRUMP: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you maybe tip them off --
TRUMP: Before and after. And they want to go in.
(END VIDEO CLIP) KEILAR: OK. Does that match what you're hearing? And as someone who served in former President George W. Bush's administration, is it standard practice for a president to be talking to oil executives ahead of an operation like this?
MCNALLY: Well, first of all, any oil company, looking at the prospect of accessing the world's largest, if very costly and risky, but largest oil reserves, is tantalizing. It's enticing. And they are used to operating in dangerous places and accepting risk.
However, in the case of Venezuela especially, where they were just kicked out some of our companies two decades ago, and given the uncertain nature of the transition we're seeing, they're going to be cautiously enticed, very risk-averse. Again, it gets back to feed. They will look at it. They will go in if it makes sense. But we'll measure this in years, not months.
And with regard to standard practice, President Trump is doing this very differently than Iraq. In Iraq, we had a decisive removal of the Saddam Hussein regime. And we had a plan for day one afterwards. We talked with oil companies. We talked with others. Now, I'll admit, Iraq did not exactly go smoothly in subsequent years.
However, we had a plan, and we implemented it, and we talked with folks. President Trump is doing it a little differently. All we know is Nicolas Maduro is in New York. Other than that, it's sort of we're making it up as we go along. And we don't have a plan, as far as I can tell, but it is about getting U.S. oil companies back. So it's different from Iraq. We'll see how it turns out.
KEILAR: There's been a shift, and the top leader is gone, right? But it's not as if the opposition has come in. You haven't had a complete regime change, when you're talking about in spirit, right? So, talk a little bit about how that impacts investment in the region and that risk analysis.
MCNALLY: Right. It makes investors more cautious. They want certainty. They want to reduce what we call above-ground risk. They want to know what government we're dealing with, how stable is that government, is that government -- can they work with them after the second Trump administration is over, right?
The oil industry is looking at buying a house they're going to live in forever, not planning a quick vacation. So they want certainty, and we're seeing anything but certainty here as things progress in Venezuela.
KEILAR: Bob, great to get your insights here. Bob McNally, thank you.
MCNALLY: Thank you.
KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour. Swiss authorities say that the bar where 40 people died celebrating the New Year had not been inspected since 2019. Certainly a lot of questions there, Boris. SANCHEZ: Yeah. Laws there governing inspections did not include looking at foam insulation in the ceiling like the material that caught fire in this case. Officials are also looking at whether the basement's fire exit door had been locked. Questions are also being raised about whether I.D. checks were performed since at least two of the victims were 14-years-old.
Also, Wegmans, the popular grocery store chain, is now scanning customers' faces and storing the data at some locations. Our affiliate WCBS reports that customers at one store in New York learned about it after a warning sign that you see there on your screen was posted. The company says the technology is being used for security reasons and to identify customers who've previously been flagged for misconduct. Some shoppers, though, have raised privacy concerns, saying they worry about potential data breaches.
And the Trump administration is freezing billions of dollars in funding for social services and child care in five Democratic-led states. A health and human services official confirmed the freeze to CNN, the agency suggesting without evidence that the funding had been used fraudulently. The affected states include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. CNN has reached out to all five states and the administration for more information on these cuts. Of course, we'll bring you any new details as we learn them.
Coming up, flu cases are at a 25-year high, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Health Department just stopped recommending the flu vaccine for most kids.
[13:50:00]
We're going to ask a doctor about this unprecedented move when we come back. Stay with CNN.
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SANCHEZ: Some new numbers from the CDC are painting a brutal picture of this flu season, the worst we've seen in decades. Nearly every state, all but four, is reporting high or very high influenza levels, with the agency confirming the deaths of at least nine children. The surge is happening as the Department of Health and Human Services now recommends fewer vaccinations for pediatric patients, including the seasonal flu shot.
Joining us now is Professor of Medicine and Surgery at George Washington University and CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Jonathan Reiner.
[13:55:00]
Dr. Reiner, thank you so much for being with us. Visits to the doctor for fever and either a cough or sore throat are the highest in almost three decades. Why is that?
DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST AND PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Because there's so much influenza and RSV circulating in the United States right now. It's really a bad time. And if you don't know somebody who is either recovering or has influenza right now, you will.
Part of the problem is that when the choices for the vaccine were picked several months ago, they were picked based on the viruses that were circulating in a part of the world at that time. After the vaccines went into production, a new strain called subclade K developed and started to circulate, and that is the predominant variant right now. So, our vaccine is not great at preventing influenza illness, but it's still very good at preventing severe illness.
So, I encourage everyone who has not yet been vaccinated to get vaccinated. This virus is going to be with us probably through February, and it's not too late to get vaccinated. Go to your nearest pharmacy and get it done.
SANCHEZ: To that point about the virus being with us through February, this is typically, correct me if I'm wrong, when we see the most cases, right, soon after the holiday when a lot of folks are traveling and gathering indoors as it's very cold outside.
REINER: Right.
SANCHEZ: Do you think that by February, we will see a decline, hopefully?
REINER: Yeah, we will. I mean, these respiratory viruses are seasonal and as we get closer to spring, we will start to see a decline in these illnesses. But it's important to understand that flu is not just an annoyance. For the very young and for the very old, it can be deadly. Almost 300 children died last year from influenza and already in the beginning of this season, we've seen almost nine children now have died from influenza and about 5,000 adults.
The United States has not been great at vaccinating our population for influenza. Less than 50 percent of adults get vaccinated. Barely 40 percent of kids get vaccinated for the flu. And the announcement yesterday that HHS is taking the influenza vaccine off of the universal recommendation list is not going to make that better.
SANCHEZ: They also narrowed recommendations for several vaccinations to children, including hepatitis B, hepatitis A as well. What's your reaction?
REINER: What is the reason for doing this? What problem is HHS solving by paring back the number of vaccines that children are getting? There is no problem. This is just the outcome or the -- this is just the result of what a single person, the secretary of HHS, has tried to do for many years, which is basically pare back vaccinations in the United States.
What HHS has said is that they're trying to bring the United States closer to what European countries do in terms of vaccination schedules. But if you actually look at how we vaccinate kids, we vaccinate kids very close, almost identically to what Canada, Great Britain, Germany and Australia also do, countries with large populations, also diverse, ethnically diverse and socioeconomically diverse populations.
We do deliver more vaccines to kids than some of the Nordic and Scandinavian countries with much different population and socioeconomic profiles than the United States have. So, there really has been no burning need to do this and actually to do this and to change, particularly the flu vaccine recommendation in the midst of a really a generational surge in that illness in the United States is bizarre.
SANCHEZ: Dr. Jonathan Reiner, appreciate you sharing your expertise. Thank you so much for joining us.
REINER: My pleasure.
SANCHEZ: A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.
KEILAR: Now what? President Trump celebrates the operation to capture Venezuela's leader, but big questions remain about the future of that country and the United States' plan moving forward. Plus, a former officer on trial, opening statements getting underway in the case against the first law enforcement official to arrive on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre.
We'll have the latest from court and new details in the killing of an Ohio dentist and --
