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White House Briefing Amid Tensions Over Iran, Venezuela & ICE; Trump Meets With Venezuelan Opposition Leader, Machado; Trump Threatens Insurrection Act to Deploy Troops to Minnesota; U.S. Military Seizes Sixth Sanctioned Venezuelan Oil Tanker; Trump Officials Eye Private Security Contractors to Safeguard Oil Assets in Venezuela. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired January 15, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: -- every state across this country, and you don't see these riots and this vandalism taking place in states like Florida. Why? Because you have a governor in that state who has empowered federal and local authorities to work together. And it is despicable what we are seeing from these Democrat politicians, especially in sanctuary states and cities across the country. Go ahead, John (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you so much. My question is, President Trump has talked twice in recent days, once at the Kennedy Center and then to Reuters again last night about canceling the election. Why is he talking about this?

LEAVITT: I believe you're referring to the President's interview at Reuters last night. I was in that interview. It was a closed-door interview. Obviously, there was not audio or video. The president was simply joking. He was saying, we're doing such a great job. We're doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling. But he was speaking facetiously.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then one more.

LEAVITT: Sure.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the Labor Secretary, she's under investigation. Has he spoken to her about this?

LEAVITT: I don't know if the president has spoken directly to the secretary. If they have, I'm unfamiliar with that conversation. But I have spoken to the president about that report regarding the secretary. He's aware of the internal investigation, and he stands by the secretary, and he thinks that she's doing a tremendous job at the Department of Labor on behalf of American workers.

PBS, go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You were mentioning a moment ago about working federal, state, local officials in Minneapolis. Governor Walz's office is saying today that he's trying to get a hold directly with the president. Have they spoken? And if they haven't, why haven't they spoken if there's a desire from Walz that they're saying to de- escalate what's happening there?

LEAVITT: I'm not sure if that's a genuine offer to speak with the president. I was with the president about 30 minutes ago, and they hadn't spoken at that point. Look, the president is always willing to answer the phone when people pick up and call.

When there was another tragic shooting many months ago in Governor Walz's state, he spoke directly with the governor. But I would ask that the governor stops inciting the harassment and illegal obstruction of law enforcement in his state. All ICE and federal law enforcement are trying to do are remove people like this off of the streets of Governor Walz's city in Minneapolis and of his state in Minnesota.

If you look at some of the individuals in this photo, these are all illegal alien criminals who came into our country under the previous administration. This is some of the most disturbing crimes you will ever read about. And there's only a few reporters in this room who will actually talk about these individuals.

This is all ICE is trying to do. They are trying to remove people like this from Governor Walz's state. And so, yes, he should pick up the phone, and he should say that he will cooperate with this president and with the federal government in making Minnesota safer, because that's all President Trump and his administration want to do.

Mary (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thanks, Karoline. The president says he wants money to go directly to Americans so they can buy their own insurance. How exactly would this work? And can the president assure Americans that this will be enough to cover their health care costs?

LEAVITT: So, this is the second principle in the president's health care plan, lowering insurance premiums specifically, and ensuring that that money is going directly back to the American people and cutting the kickbacks that then raise those premiums. So this plan, once put into legislative text and passed by Congress and sent to the president's desk, will stop sending big insurance companies billions of extra taxpayer-funded subsidy payments and instead send that money directly to eligible Americans to allow them to buy the health insurance of their choice through, you may have heard it be referred to as health savings accounts, whether that ends up being the actual name of such accounts, we'll have to see.

Again, Congress and the White House are going to work together to put this plan into action. And then secondly, the Great Health Care Plan will fund a cost-sharing reduction program for health care plans, which will save taxpayers at least $36 billion and reduce the most common Obamacare plan premiums by over 10 percent, and that's according to the Congressional Budget Office.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But 20 million Americans in recent weeks have seen their health care costs soar. Can you assure them that if this plan is put in place that they will be able to cover those costs?

LEAVITT: If this plan is put in place, every single American who has health care in the United States will see lower costs as a result. They will see more transparency. All of these proposals that are within the Great Health Care Plan are incredibly popular with the American people, and they will impact everyone, not just a small fraction of those who are within the health care marketplace, but every single American will continue to see their costs go down. And I will note that they already are with respect to prescription drug prices.

We look at what the president has done with most favored nations. You've seen these big pharmaceutical companies in the Oval Office saying that this president and his team were non-stop around the clock pressuring us and negotiating with us to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Americans, and we are already seeing that to the tune in some cases of more than 500 percent. And that TrumpRx website is something that the administration will be formally launching very soon, so Americans will have access to those lower costs of drugs.

Josh?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. The president has called on credit card companies to lower the cap rate to 10 percent effective the 20th next week. If they don't do that, what's his plan? What will he do? What's the threat?

[13:35:00]

(LAUGH)

LEAVITT: Tariffs? No, I'm just kidding. The president certainly has an expectation, Josh, that the credit card companies will do this, just as he did with the pharmaceutical companies, that they will lower costs for American consumers. I don't have a specific consequence to outline for you, but certainly this is an expectation and, frankly, a demand that the president has made.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you give us an update on the Fed? Sorry.

(LAUGH)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a reporting from, I think, Fox Business that Rick Rieder had an interview this week scheduled. The president has indicated he's already made a selection, or at least he's settling on someone. Where is he in that process, and when can we expect an announcement? Is he still doing interviews?

LEAVITT: Look, the president is in the same place as you all have been asking about this for many, many weeks. He's in a decision-making phase. There are a few people who he likes very much for this job, maybe less than that. The truth is, like with all decisions, it's a decision for the president to make, and he said to Reuters in that interview last night that he thinks he'll be finally making that decision in the next couple of weeks. So we will see. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And very quickly, there's been some criticism from other governments about Grok and xAI, the Twitter A.I. bot, and things it's been doing to manipulate images, including whether that would violate the Take It Down Act that the first lady just supported. We've not heard from this administration on it.

Elon Musk says that they've disabled that, but I wanted to ask you whether the administration has a position and whether that's something that you will be pursuing, or whether the president has talked to Mr. Musk about that.

LEAVITT: Yes, I will talk to the Office of Science and Technology, and we will get you a firm statement and answer on exactly where the administration stands. I don't want to speak on that without speaking with the experts on it.

(CROSSTALK)

Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just to follow-up on the health care plan, one of the things in the Affordable Care Act was coverage of pre-existing conditions. Is there any discussion or inclusion on that issue in the president's plan?

LEAVITT: The president's plan that he outlined today will have no impact on individuals in this country with pre-existing conditions. Obviously, that's a continued conversation that the White House will have with Congress, but that's not the president's intention with the Great Health Care Plan.

Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thanks, Karoline. Two questions on Minneapolis.

LEAVITT: And then you. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thanks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Two questions on Minneapolis.

LEAVITT: Sure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One on the ICE agent and the other on the rioting. I believe last night, there were protesters or rioters that rifled through an FBI car, took weapons. We had a reporter embedded with ICE who said that she saw constant harassment all evening. Can you speak to the rhetoric we're hearing from Democrat politicians, whether they're causing violence against ICE, as well as some of the headlines we've seen not including the full story?

LEAVITT: Yeah. I mean, to your first point, I think I've addressed that, that these Democrat governors and mayors in not just Minnesota, but in states across the country are essentially, you know, they've referred to ICE agents who, again, are brave men and women. And I would encourage everyone in this room and I would encourage Governor Walz and other Democrats who are demeaning law enforcement to sit down and have a cup of coffee with an ICE agent or a Border Patrol agent.

These are great, patriotic men and women who have families, who put on the uniform every day and are following our nation's immigration laws at the direction of their bosses. And again, at the direction of the law, they are simply trying to enforce the law. And the Democrat Party has demeaned these individuals.

They've even referred to them as Nazis and as the Gestapo. And that is absolutely leading to the violence we're seeing in the streets. If you look at some of the images out of Minneapolis last night, look at this vehicle.

Look at what it says. It says, F ICE. You have these individuals who are putting their middle finger, proudly so, at the camera. Another ICE vehicle that was vandalized last night by these left-wing agitators. People don't do this without encouragement from people in power who make them feel like it is OK.

Here's another one. And I'm pretty sure this car, you can't see it, said 'the best agent is a dead agent' or something to that effect. This is despicable rhetoric that we're seeing. And the media is absolutely complicit in this violence because if you look at the headline from CNN, "Protests Erupt After Federal Agent Shoots Man In Minneapolis." That is not the story. That is not the truth.

If you actually want to know the truth, you can look at what the Department of Homeland Security released, which is that this ICE agent was executing a targeted operation against a Venezuelan illegal alien who was unlawfully present in the country, who fled by car and then fled by foot.

And when this ICE agent tried to detain the individual, three more of his comrades came rushing out of a house and started ambushing and attacking the ICE agent. They used a shovel or a broom to smash his face in. And so, yes, that agent had to use self-defense and take up his weapon to protect his own life.

That is what's happening on the streets of Minneapolis. That is what's happening on the streets, unfortunately, of these Democrat-run cities and states where you have elected officials who are encouraging such violence against our brave men and women in law enforcement.

Andrew?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Karoline.

[13:40:00]

Two questions. First, to follow-up on one of my colleagues who asked you about the president's interview with Reuters. You said that he was joking about canceling the elections, but Americans for generations have fought and died for democracy, for this democracy. Are you saying that the president finds the idea of canceling elections funny?

LEAVITT: Andrew, were you in the room? No, you weren't. I was in the room. I heard the conversation. And only someone like you would take that so seriously and pose it as a question that way.

Philip (ph), go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Karoline. Senator Elizabeth Warren said that the president called her earlier this week to discuss caps on credit card interest rates. I'm curious, would the president work with her and other Democrats in Congress on a legislative fix to this issue?

LEAVITT: I think the president would work in good faith with anyone in Congress for a good legislative fix that would benefit the American people. And that's precisely why he called Senator Warren earlier this week on that matter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks, Karoline. Earlier, you were just defending ICE agents generally. And earlier on, Secretary Noem spoke to the media and she said, among other things, that they are doing everything correctly. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year. 170 U.S. citizens were detained by ICE. And Renee Good was shot in the head and killed by an ICE agent. How does that equate to them doing everything correctly?

LEAVITT: Why was Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you asking me my opinion?

LEAVITT: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because an ICE agent acted recklessly and killed an unjustified person.

LEAVITT: Oh, OK. So you're a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you want me to do?

LEAVITT: Yeah. Because you're a left-wing hack. You're not a reporter. You're posing in this room as a journalist. And it's so clear by the premise of your question. And you and the people in the media who have such biases, but fake like you're a journalist, you shouldn't even be sitting in that seat. But you're pretending like you're a journalist, but you're a left-wing activist.

And the question that you just raised and your answer proves your bias. You should be reporting on the facts. You should be reporting on the cases. Do you have the numbers of how many American citizens were killed at the hands of illegal aliens who ICE is trying to remove from this country? I bet you don't.

I bet you didn't even read up on those stories. I bet you never even read about Laken Riley or Jocelyn Nungaray or all of the innocent Americans who were killed at the hands of illegal aliens in this country.

And the brave men and women of ICE are doing everything in their power to remove those heinous individuals and make our communities safer. And shame on people like you in the media who have a crooked view and have a biased view and pretend like you're a real honest journalist.

Kelly (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Two quick questions on Iran. I wanted to ask first, just if you can say, how close was the president to potentially launching strikes last night? And was it the Gulf States that convinced him not to do that, as some of the region there have said?

LEAVITT: Well, look, Kelly (ph), I know there's been a lot of speculation in the media about what the president is going to do at any given moment or any given night. And I would say a lot of these stories, to be honest with you, I've been reading them and they have been based on anonymous sources who are pretending or guessing to know the president's thinking.

The truth is, only President Trump knows what he's going to do and a very, very small team of advisers are read into his thinking on that. And as I just told you, he continues to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Iran. And as we saw yesterday, he had heard that the killings and executions would stop.

And we have seen 800 people, their lives have been spared as a result of that. The president continues to closely monitor, but also keep all of his options on the table.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Karoline, two separate questions.

LEAVITT: Sure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the Machado meeting first, what is it that the president feels that he needs to hear from her or from the opposition party that he hadn't heard prior to today or he wanted to hear in the meeting to be able to convince him to commit to some sort of a timeline for elections?

LEAVITT: I'm not sure the president is going into such -- the meeting with expectations like you just laid out, Fran (ph). I don't think he needs to hear anything from Ms. Machado. I think, generally, this is a meeting that the president was willing to take and willing to accept to meet Ms. Machado in person and to just have a frank and positive discussion about what's taking place in Venezuela.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the subject of Greenland, Jeff Landry, the president's Special Envoy for Greenland, wasn't in the White House meeting yesterday. Can you say why that was and what exactly the role he is playing in these conversations about acquiring Greenland?

LEAVITT: Well, the vice president and the secretary of state were present for that meeting. And the meeting, it was a productive meeting. It was a good meeting. And in that meeting, the two sides agreed to really establish a working group of individuals who will continue to have technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland. Those talks will take place, I'm told, every two to three weeks.

So this is a conversation the administration intends to keep having with the Danes and with the respected delegation from Greenland. But the president has made his priority quite clear. He wants the United States to acquire Greenland. He thinks it's in our best national security to do that.

[13:45:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There have been multiple instances of American citizens being detained by ICE. And I'm wondering what the administration is asking the agency to do, or what steps is the administration asking the agency to take to ensure that Americans are not wrongly arrested?

LEAVITT: Obviously, ICE is focused on detaining individuals who are unlawfully present in the country. And there have been hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have been arrested and detained and deported from this country by ICE over the course of the last year. And that's their intention, and that is their goal.

Elizabeth?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Karoline. One point about Greenland, E.U. reportedly sent troops over there. Does that change at all what the president is doing on this? And then a second question. Yesterday, in a Senate health hearing, Senator Josh Hawley repeatedly asked a doctor if men can get pregnant, and she did not directly answer that. What are your thoughts on that?

LEAVITT: Well, to your first question on Greenland, I don't think troops in Europe impact the president's decision-making process, nor does it impact his goal of the acquisition of Greenland at all.

To your second question, I mean, anyone in their right mind with common sense who's speaking honestly and candidly will say that men cannot get pregnant. And I think I can attest to that myself. So thank you all very much.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, a press briefing chock-full of news on a number of topics there. First, if we can, on the international topics, ending there with the press secretary reiterating in her words that the president has made his priority quite clear regarding Greenland, and that is that he intends to take it, despite what she described as constructive conversations with diplomats from Greenland and Denmark in the White House yesterday.

The other point I would note is just her comments about Venezuela. She had, interestingly, equal praise about the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, saying that she's a remarkable and brave voice, but saying that Delcy Rodriguez, who until a couple of weeks ago was Nicolas Maduro's Vice President, is being extremely cooperative. She would not be pinned down on when the president wants democratic elections there. She used the phrase, hopefully seeing elections someday.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah, don't hold your breath, Maria Corina Machado, as she's there having lunch with the president. And then just on the domestic front, obviously, Minnesota factoring very large there. She talked about -- she was clearly reserving the president's right to invoke the Insurrection Act, which she's talked about doing in Minneapolis.

She talked about professional agitators, and she said that people are unlawfully obstructing legitimate law enforcement operations. She was holding up photos of some of the scenes there in Minneapolis, and in one she took issue with someone flipping their middle finger off, flipping off ICE agents.

So just to be clear, whatever you think of ICE, love them or hate them, some of the behavior that you're seeing in Minneapolis by people who are opposed to their operation there, some of it is lawful, and some of it is unlawful. And flipping them off, that is lawful. Flipping the bird is your First Amendment right.

It's also President Trump's First Amendment right. He actually just flipped off someone at a Ford plant in Dearborn this week on a visit. A worker there was yelling at him, 'pedophile protector', later saying it was because of the whole Epstein thing, and the White House said that that was an appropriate response for him to flip the bird.

TAPPER: And listen, the kind of language that you've heard from ICE agents as well, granted I get that they're under pressure there, but oftentimes in these interactions, not just with people they're attempting to detain, but also with protesters laced with the F-bomb, I won't repeat it, I mean, the degree of hostility is sharp.

KEILAR: It's tough. And Andy McCabe is with us here, former FBI Deputy Director. That's the thing, even the lawful actions of folks in Minneapolis, and you can fit this into both categories, Andy, but that sort of -- the yelling, the exhibits of, I guess, agitation, dismay by protesters, that's also getting under the skin of ICE as they are there carrying out their operation. But let's kind of go through some of what we heard there in the briefing.

First, just Karoline Leavitt, reserving the president's right to use the Insurrection Act. What do you think of what you're hearing about that?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST AND FORMER FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR: Well, it doesn't surprise me at all that they're considering that very seriously right now. We know the president has had a history of deploying the military, it took place to locations domestically. Again, a complete departure from every other president before him, but nevertheless, here we are.

The Insurrection Act is quite vague. So if anybody wants to look at it, it's at 10 U.S. Code Section 252 is the relevant part of it that we're talking about here.

[13:50:00]

And it basically says any time the president determines that there is an assemblage of people or essentially activity in a city that makes it impracticable to enforce federal law, then the president can declare an insurrection and send in either the National Guard or the United States military. So the president absolutely has very broad, ill-defined, I would argue, power to invoke the Insurrection Act.

However, there are other things that push against that here, right? We do have, as you just noted, a First Amendment. So there's, you know, in the halls of jurisprudence, there's a good legal argument to be made here that what's happening is not an illegal assemblage. It's rather people, for the most part anyway, exercising their First Amendment rights.

But at the end of the day, the president can do or will do what he chooses to do. And the law gives him a fair amount of leverage there.

KEILAR: Some of the behavior is illegal, Andy, right? We've heard the police chief of Minneapolis, and I know the police force there feels very stuck in the middle of this as they are separated from doing anything with ICE. And yet, they're taking a lot of incoming from people there on the street.

He has said that there were people unlawfully assembled. That is a real thing. But on the flip side, there are also people who are demonstrating, and that is their right, protected under the Constitution. It might be, to ICE, disruptive to what they're doing, very annoying, incredibly agitating for those ICE agents.

But how are you seeing kind of the interaction of these different behaviors and ICE's response to them?

MCCABE: Yeah, it's incredibly complex. As you said before, foul language, flipping people off, holding up signs that say nasty things, totally within your rights to do that, totally within your rights, protected by the First Amendment.

But physically interacting with ICE agents, getting between them and the people that they are trying to lawfully arrest, that can easily be cast as impeding the work of a federal agent and as impeding law enforcement, and that is not within your rights. And certainly engaging in violence, anything from threats of violence to actually, as we saw last night in Minneapolis, throwing fireworks at law enforcement agents, attacking vehicles, things like that. That is felony-level conduct.

That is absolutely not protected by the First Amendment. This is why, if you go back to the civil rights movement, groups like the NAACP and others spent so much time training people, literally held classes in training academies, and exhorting people to protest, but to do so peacefully. You've got to stay on the right side of the law if you want your protest to have any effect on this problem.

Now, from the ICE point of view, police officers and federal agents have to deal with distractions, have to deal with people who don't like what they're doing all the time. That's part of their job. They shouldn't be threatened or attacked, but they don't go out in the morning, expecting everyone they interact with to be really happy that they're there doing what they're doing.

So they need to level up their professionalism, their discretion, and stop aggravating these situations by taking the sort of provocative action that we have seen so many times during this immigration push.

KEILAR: Andrew McCabe, thank you so much for your perspective there. Jim?

TAPPER: On the topic of Venezuela, top of mind at the White House press briefing a short time ago, I want to bring in now Bryan Stern. He's the Founder of Grey Bull Rescue, which helped Machado escape from Venezuela just last year. Good to have you back, Bryan. Thanks so much for joining.

BRYAN STERN, FOUNDER, GREY BULL RESCUE: Thanks for having us. I appreciate it.

TAPPER: In terms of the way forward, CNN has new exclusive reporting that the Trump administration is preparing to use private military contractors to protect oil assets in Venezuela rather than sending in American troops.

I wonder, is that a realistic option, do you think? Can private contractors secure those facilities against, I mean, what might be armed opposition there?

STERN: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that's very possible, and I think it's not the worst idea. You know, we've seen this in Yemen and other places where oil companies have had interest in high-threat areas, and there are brave men and women who are retired special operations folks and intelligence community folks, folks that are on my team that did this sort of thing for many years in their afterlife, as they retired or got out of the military in the special operations world.

[13:55:00]

So it's a fine line, though, and care must be taken and caution must be taken, so it should not be a free-for-all. It should be regulated and managed properly, but it is cheaper, better, and smarter than deploying the 2nd Marine Division, that's for sure.

TAPPER: Well, there's also precedent, of course, in Iraq, for instance, after the U.S. invasion, where you had private contractors protecting pipelines, et cetera. But in terms of replacing the U.S. military, you bring up the idea of regulation. I mean, would these private contractors have the right to use deadly force? And if so, what law would govern their actions there?

STERN: Usually there's a status of forces agreement that the private military contractors would fall under if it's a DOD or U.S. government or State Department-sanctioned activity. If not, it'll be the local laws of Venezuela.

And of course, this is not designed to obfuscate or create obfuscation for any kind of activity. This is protective and defensive in nature, and you always have the inherent right to self-defense, no matter who you are, even in the United States of America. So if you're a private military contractor or a security company, and you're asked to guard anything really, a synagogue in America to an oil refinery in Maracaibo, Venezuela, you're not there riding a unicycle, you're not there -- you know, you're not there to make a turn to sue (ph) in Mascarpone. You're there to protect things, you know, it's a job.

TAPPER: Let me ask you about Maria Corina Machado because, of course, you were essential in getting her out of the country safely, travel to Europe, accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Is it safe for her to return to the country now? I remember when you and I last spoke, you said no, but now that Venezuela is in effect under new management to some degree, Delcy Rodriguez, with U.S. oversight and the threat of further U.S. military force, would it be safe for her to go back home?

STERN: You know, we conducted a very -- Grey Bull Rescue, my team and I conducted a very bold exfiltration of Maria, and to do a similarly bold infiltration of Maria would be equally as hard, I think.

I think that at the moment, Maduro is in handcuffs behind bars, that's great. You know, he's not sitting on a bidet in Brooklyn, he's in a jail cell in Brooklyn, right? So, but at the end of the day, he's just one man. There's still much work to be done.

I think what President Trump is doing with Delcy, he's getting a lot of criticism for it. I do understand where he's coming from, though. There's like this -- there's -- it's strategic what he's doing, and I agree with it.

But at the end of the day for Maria, there are still tens of thousands of people that are loyal to Maduro, to the cartels, to the regime, that would absolutely love to -- that would love to see harm come to her.

TAPPER: Yeah.

STERN: So I think it's not safe for her to go back. I think it could be. I think it could be, but you would need a lot of security.

TAPPER: Bryan Stern, thanks so much for joining.

STERN: Thank you. Grey Bull Rescue.

TAPPER: And a new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right after this.

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