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House Democrats Hold Hearing Five Years After January 6 Attack; Pardoned January 6 Rioters March to Capitol to Mark Anniversary; Maduro's Vice President Rodriguez Sworn in as Venezuela's Acting President; Corporation for Public Broadcasting Shutting Down After Funding Cuts. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired January 06, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Today, members of the January 6th Select Committee are holding a hearing to mark the five year anniversary of the January 6th Capitol riot, and this comes as a new report finds that of the nearly 1,600 people pardoned by President Trump for their roles in the attack, at least 33 have been accused of new crimes, including child sexual abuse. During today's hearing, a former Capitol Police officer spoke out against Trump's pardons.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WINSTON PINGEON, FORMER CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER: Pardoning criminals who severely beat me and my fellow officers that day is completely unacceptable. We cannot accept violent felons being pardoned and released back into our neighborhoods without consequence. That is not justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:35:00]

KEILAR: At the same time, outside the Capitol, a group of pardoned January 6th rioters holding their own event to mark the anniversary. They just marched from the Ellipse near the White House to the Capitol, roughly on the same route and at the same time as five years ago. With us now is 4th anniversary. They just marched from the ellipse near the White House to the Capitol, roughly on the same route and at the same time as five years ago.

With us now is former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger. He served on the January 6th Select Committee. We're also joined by former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn. He defended the building during the attack.

Harry, how are you reflecting on this day five years later?

HARRY DUNN, FORMER U.S. CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER: I know reflection is a tough word for it because we're still ongoing. We're living through what happened that day. It's still ongoing. The threats to democracy are still very much alive. And not only that, the attacks that we went through. I'm so glad that

Officer Winston Pidgeon got to speak at the hearing because there are so many people that didn't know or so many untold stories of heroism and bravery that day. So I'm glad that he got to tell his story.

But there's so many other officers whose names you'll never know, whose stories you'll never hear. And it sucks because this administration and their enablers in Congress are doing whatever they can to whitewash and downplay flat out lie about what happened and change the narrative.

KEILAR: Yes, there's like 2 realities on this and you were both at this hearing today. We're also speaking was Pam Hemphills, a convicted rioter who has since disavowed Trump and rejected his pardon, which you were just explaining to me. She had to kind of jump through hoops to do.

She said accepting a pardon would be a slap in the face -- it-- would be a slap in the faces of Capitol police. What was that like being at that hearing when you have, as we see here, people marching, sort of recreating the march from five years ago.

ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is mixed feelings. So seeing somebody like Pam, who I've now known for about a year, and she is like, seriously, she still is asking forgiveness for her role. And it's like, OK, Pam, you know, you've done a great -- you know, you've done a great job in getting that forgiveness.

And you see that, and that, to me, is encouraging because there are still people out there that recognize right and wrong. And then I see this march and I'm like, there are people that don't -- either don't recognize right and wrong or simply think they can overcome it. What it does though, and like today, what it reinforced to me is that the January 6th committee hearing -- the January 6th committee was worth it.

Because the DOJ was not allowed to finish its investigation because Donald Trump knew that he would end up in jail, so they stopped that the second he was elected. And the only good record of what happened that day was the January 6th committee. And I know for a fact that my kid and my grandkid they're going to know the truth about January 6th because of the work we did.

They're not going to believe it was Antifa, they're not going to believe it was BLM, they're not going to buy the lies of Donald Trump, but I personally think that we will never utter the name Donald Trump again after three from now.

KEILAR: The MAGA movement and President Trump, they've kind of tried to rebrand. You could argue they've effectively rebranded January 6th and what happened, he pardoned rioters, he was celebrated certainly in his corner for that. How do you see -- how do you see that, Harry, and how Republican lawmakers are managing that?

DUNN: Well, the thing is, history gets distorted when there's no accountability. And I think that's the problem that there is now. Adam was talking about the kids and grandkids and 100 years from now, people are going to read this history, and they're going to say, wow, the president did this? Well, what happened to him afterwards? Well, he was elected president again.

So the problem, there was no accountability. So that's the threat to keep things like that to happen again. Accountability serves as the deterrent to keep things from happening again. And I have been fighting since January 7th, 2021, for accountability. And that the fight doesn't stop just because, you know, he's elected president.

It gets a little cloudy now. Like, all right, what is the fight now? What does it look like? But now it's pushing back against the people that are trying to whitewash and celebrate. Not only were the people pardoned, but now they're being celebrated and appointed in the administration.

KINZINGER: Oh, an interesting point about that. So if you remember after people were arrested for role on January 6 literally all of them were contrite. They were all like we shouldn't have done it shouldn't have been there and then a maybe a rival news station and some other news surrounded these folks and started calling them victims.

And when they started doing that these folks took on the persona victims and then Trump started calling them the January 6 hostages and that's how that happens. And eventually people become so confused they don't know what to believe they just kind of give up and that's the danger. Because democracy it can survive a bad day what it can't survive is the inability to take accountability for it.

KEILAR: It's hard to admit you're wrong. I mean, we teach our kids that all the time, right? It takes courage. It's it's really difficult. How do you see your Republican former colleagues managing that revision of what happened?

KINZINGER: It makes me sad, honestly, because look, Trump has been in our lives for 10 years. So anybody that was willing to stand up against him is either not run again, been primaried out or whatever, right?

[14:40:00]

What I see now is just a group of folks that acquiesce that know better. If you put them on CIA Truth Juice -- which I just found out isn't real and doesn't exist. But if it did, if you put them on there, they would tell you what January 6th was, because they know. But again, if they admit it, they have to admit their role in enabling him. And that's hard for people to do.

KEILAR: And Harry, final word to you, because Speaker Johnson still hasn't hung the plaque honoring the heroism of Capitol Police officers that day, which we can all see. It's on. There's video evidence of it. There's a federal law.

Despite the federal law, he hasn't done this. You filed a lawsuit last year to compel its hanging. Speaker's office told CNN the law authoring -- authorizing the plaque is not implementable. Didn't elaborate, though. Why is it so important to you to see this happen?

DUNN: Well, look, Congress controls the gavel right now. Excuse me, the Republicans control the gavel. We build a law. You don't determine something -- you can't implement it after the law is passed. You should have passed a law that you can implement.

It's very important because we're seeing these things that Donald Trump in this administration is trying to do. The White House put out on their website a timeline blaming the Capitol Police for the violence on January 6th. They posted that today on the WhiteHouse.gov website.

So, we've got the administration trying to whitewash what happened that day and lie about what happened that day. So, look, we've been on news programs asking them to hang the plaque. We've asked them directly.

We've said, please. Who the hell says please in Congress anymore? People don't even say please anymore, and that didn't happen, so we'll see you in court.

KEILAR: Harry, Adam, thank you so much to both of you for joining us on this day. Thank you. Can't believe it's been five years, right? It feels like it was maybe a couple years ago. I appreciate it.

Still to come, Venezuela's opposition leader making an incredible offer to share her Nobel Peace Prize with President Trump. But we've also learned that she hasn't spoken to him in months. So what's happening here? We'll talk about it.

[14:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado says she hasn't spoken to President Trump since October. In her first interview since the capture of ousted President Nicolas Maduro, the Nobel Peace Prize winner tells Fox News she welcomed the action as a huge step for humanity.

CNN's Rafael Romo is with us. All right, Rafael, what more can you tell us about Machado and her plans?

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi Brianna. Well, Maria Corina Machado says she has been in hiding both in Venezuela and abroad for the last 16 months. As a matter of fact, her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, accepted a Georgia Tech award here in Atlanta last February on behalf of her mother because she was unable to travel.

Machado was also unable to personally accept the Nobel Peace Prize at the official ceremony in Oslo, and her daughter once again accepted the award on her behalf. Machado arrived in Norway hours later after a clandestine journey out of Venezuela. Now, she says she's planning to go back to Venezuela as soon as possible.

And in an interview with Fox News last night, she also said that she's open to, listen to this, sharing her Nobel Peace Prize with President Trump when she was specifically asked about it. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you, at any point, offer to give him the Nobel Peace Prize? Did that actually happen? I had read that somewhere. I wasn't sure if it was true.

MARIA CORINA MACHADO, VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER: Well, it hasn't happened yet, but I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we believe the Venezuelan people, because this is a surprise of the Venezuelan people, certainly want to give it to him and share it with him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: Machado is very popular in Venezuela, and the opposition claims that Edmundo Gonzalez, with her as running mate, overwhelmingly won the 2024 presidential election that many observers say was rigged to allow Nicolas Maduro to stay in power. However, when asked if she should be the next leader of Venezuela, Trump had this to say the day after Maduro's capture.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Brianna, Delcy Rodriguez, who was the country's vice president under Nicolas Maduro, has been sworn in as president, which for the moment allows for the same leftist kind of populism to stay in power, although Trump says she will do whatever his government will ask of her. Brianna, now back to you.

KEILAR: All right, Rafael Romo, thank you -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Let's dig deeper on all of this with Daniel Landsberg-Rodriguez. He's a founding partner at Aurora Macro Strategies, also an adjunct lecturer in Global Initiatives at Northwestern Kellogg University. Daniel, thank you so much for being with us.

I first want to get your reaction to something that Stephen Miller said to Jake Tapper yesterday on CNN regarding elections in Venezuela. He said that there would be conversations about democracy along the way, but he says the objective right now is security and stability for the people of Venezuela. Is that possible with Maduro's acolytes still in power?

DANIEL LANSBERG-RODRIGUEZ, FOUNDING PARTNER, AURORA MACRO STRATEGIES: Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show, Boris. Look, this is, I think, a scenario in which you have a very weak transitional government, which is getting basically pummeled with competing incentives. You know, they're going to be reporting to Washington -- in Washington's telling.

[14:50:00]

And Washington is going to be insisting on certain things that really cut against a lot of the sort of entrenched and many of them quite dangerous interests that have been backing this government the whole time. So while Delcy Rodriguez attempts to sort of walk that tightrope, I think what the administration is basically saying is that they're going to prioritize trying to keep the center holding rather than, you know, allowing for the transition that, you know, a vast majority of Venezuelans want and that voted overwhelmingly for, you know, quite recently.

SANCHEZ: Yes, to the thought of that center holding, Venezuela's government yesterday granted broad powers to the presidency and ordered security forces to capture anyone promoting or supporting the attack. We have not, to this point, seen the release of a single political prisoner. In fact, more than a dozen journalists wound up getting detained.

So beyond getting access to Venezuela's oil, have you seen signs that the administration is going to push for basic rights in Venezuela?

LANSBERG-RODRIGUEZ: I would be surprised if they didn't push for some level of releasing political prisoners. One of the sort of competing incentives for this government moving forward in Venezuela, the transitional Rodriguez government will be, you know, this is a government that is ruled by fear for a very long time and dismantling that fear apparatus, you know, sort of the state sort of coercion mechanisms.

That's something that really doesn't just hit them in you know, in terms of stability, but in their ability to really implement, you know, the basic tools of governance. You know, and that I think is something that contradicts what, you know, Washington's going to need to be able to spin this transition into a palpable improvement over Nicolas Maduro in the first place. And I think that those competing incentives are why Delcy Rodriguez is going to have a really, really difficult job.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Lastly, I wanted to get your thoughts on this, because yesterday, soon after she was sworn in, there was video of her greeting warmly the ambassadors of China, Russia, and Iran. One of the key arguments from President Trump and Miller and Secretary of State Rubio is that our adversaries should not have a foothold in Venezuela. So I wonder what you make of these images.

LANSBERG-RODRIGUEZ: I think that there's a perception in maybe the market certainly, in D.C. I think as well that Delcy is a little bit more moderate than she actually is historically. She has been sort of a diplomat figure to both the private sector and other countries. And, you know, and she knows how to play that role really well.

At the same time, you know, she is a very committed member of this government who has done very well and really been involved with it since the very beginning under Hugo Chavez. So the idea that we're, you know, that she is somehow moderate by any standard is, I think, you know, it's something that people are expecting to see, and I think that they're going to be surprised at where she, you know, draws those lines.

You know, she is an idealist. You know, who can play pragmatic, but at the same time, you know, in trying to survive, she has 100 wolves at her door, and then one wolf a phone call away in Washington that may or may not come back. It'll be interesting to see how that balance plays out when those incentives continue to compete.

SANCHEZ: Daniel Landsberg-Rodriguez, thank you so much for the perspective. Appreciate your time.

LANSBERG-RODRIGUEZ: Thank you, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Still to come, what's next for NPR and PBS as the agency that funds public broadcasting votes to shut itself down.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Nearly six decades after it was founded, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting itself down. Congress voted last year to defund the agency at the urging of President Trump. We're joined now by CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter. Brian, the question is, what happens to PBS and NPR?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Right, the corporation is turning its lights off, but local stations are finding ways to remain on the air. PBS and NPR say that this defunding, it does hurt, but it's not a fatal blow, and that's because the funding for public media is really complex, probably too complex for the system's own good. In addition to the federal funding, PBS and NPR and stations rely on foundations and individuals, in some cases, states.

So the federal funding is going away, and in some cases, in some ways, it's like the foundation of the house, so certainly if you lose the there's some uncertainty about what is ahead. And when I speak to public media executives, they emphasize the uncertainty about what is going to happen.

But at least for the time being, stations are still on the air and programs are still being produced. And that's a point that some in the system are trying to emphasize now. Here's Jeff Bennett, the anchor, the co-anchor of the PBS NewsHour on X, saying, Hey, the corporation is gone, but the mission it fueled is living on at the NewsHour and at other programs.

And here's NPR. If you go to the NPR website, you click on the donate page, you'll see the messaging. The NPR network is entering the New Year without federal funding, so your support is essential.

So you see PBS and NPR and local stations trying more than ever to raise money from viewers and listeners to offset the federal funding gap. The corporation that's now dissolving and shutting itself down, it was in charge of dispersing money from the federal government to local stations across the country. And we've seen some stations in big markets say that fundraising is going pretty well, making up for those loss of federal dollars.

However, some smaller stations say they are struggling and some stations in rural areas say they may have to shut down as a result of the loss of federal funding. Meanwhile, I recently spoke with a Democratic senator who's already talking about how to try to restore funding if and when Democrats regain control of the Congress after the midterms. And there are some on the Hill already brainstorming ...

END