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YouTube to Let Parents Stop Teens From Endless Scrolling; Trump Meeting With Venezuelan Opposition Leader, Machado; White House Says Trump Hasn't Taken Options Off Table for Responding to Iran; Trump Threatens to Use Insurrection Act, Deploy Troops to Minnesota; Associate Press Reports NCAA Basketball Players Charged in Alleged Rigging Scheme. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 15, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:56]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": So who will lead Venezuela now? As President Trump's plans for the country come into focus, he meets with the leader of the opposition at the White House. The White House press secretary spoke about this just moments ago.

And President Trump's new threat to use the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to Minneapolis as tensions rise between federal agents and many residents in the city. And putting a stop to the scrolling, YouTube will let parents stop their teens from endlessly looking at short videos. Happens a lot. We'll discuss whether that will work. We are following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

We begin with Breaking News from the White House where President Trump is meeting now with the Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado. The Nobel Prize winner is trying to win the president's support. This after U.S. forces ousted Nicolas Maduro earlier this month.

Just moments ago, the Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, took questions as that meeting got underway and as tensions roil over Iran, Greenland, and ICE operations here at home. CNN's Kristen Holmes was at the briefing. And Kristen, first on Venezuela, given that meeting is underway, based on Leavitt's comments, does not appear that the president is in any rush for a democratic transition in Venezuela.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Jim, and that's what we've really been reporting now since the United States captured Nicolas Maduro, is this idea that the U.S. is very aware of what it will look like if there is not administrative stability in Venezuela. And they believe that bringing democracy this soon and bringing elections this soon would lead to instability.

Now, of course, there are questions about the current work that the administration is doing with the Acting President, Delcy Rodriguez, who is very much part of the Maduro regime. She was his vice president. She is part of his inner circle. And yesterday, President Trump essentially called her a terrific person.

Now, we did ask Karoline Leavitt what President Trump's goals were going into this meeting and about that working relationship with Rodriguez. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I know the president was looking forward to this meeting and he was expecting it to be a good and positive discussion with Ms. Machado, who is really a remarkable and brave voice for many of the people of Venezuela.

So the president looks forward to obviously talking to her about the realities on the ground in the country and what is taking place. Secretary Rubio and the administration have been in constant communication with Ms. Rodriguez and other members of the interim government in Venezuela. They have been extremely cooperative.

They have thus far met all of the demands and requests of the United States and of the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: OK, Jim, a couple things to note here. One, when we talk about Maria Machado, this is the first time that President Trump and Maria Machado are meeting face-to-face.

We also know that President Trump declined to endorse her. In fact, he actually went further than that. When asked about her, she of course is the leader of the opposition, leading the country, he said that she didn't have the respect or support of the Venezuelan people to actually lead the country.

And I have been told by some U.S. officials that he had never really warmed to her. But as they sit down for this lunch, there is also something else looming over them, which of course is the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize, something that President Trump has coveted.

And when he was asked yesterday or the day before whether or not if Machado gave him her Nobel Peace Prize, he would change his opinion of her, he didn't answer directly. He said that he'd have to sit down and talk to her, and in fact, added that nobody deserves a Nobel Peace Prize more than him. So that itself is looming over this lunch as the two of them sit down face-to-face for the first time.

SCIUTTO: Yeah, of course it is the Nobel Peace Prize Committee that awards the Peace Prize.

HOLMES: Right.

SCIUTTO: Kristen Holmes at the White House, thanks.

HOLMES: And it's non-transferrable.

SCIUTTO: Exactly. Kristen Holmes at the White House, thanks so much. Brianna?

[14:05:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": All right, we're joined now by Democratic Congressman, Adam Smith of Washington. He's the Ranking Member on the House Armed Services Committee. We did just hear from White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, that Trump likes what he's seeing with the current regime led by Delcy Rodriguez and Venezuela, Congressman, which of course is basically the Maduro regime minus Maduro. He's open to "hopefully seeing elections one day." What do you make of that?

REP. ADAM SMITH, (D-WA) RANKING MEMBER, HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Yeah, it seems pretty clear that President Trump had a very narrow focus in terms of wanting to get rid of Maduro in Venezuela. President Trump wants access to the oil. He's been very clear about that.

Now to be fair, I think Secretary Rubio and others in the administration probably have broader goals than that. They would like to see a democratic transition, but there's been no evidence that President Trump cares about that at all. He's been very blunt about it. He wants basically to control Venezuela, so he can have better access to their resources.

I think that's a horrible policy for the U.S. to engage in for a whole host of reasons, but it certainly seems like President Trump is not interested in democracy or the well-being of the Venezuelan people or even frankly, the cocaine smuggling that he was so concerned about a few weeks ago. He wants Venezuela's oil and he wants to figure out how to get it and if Delcy Rodriguez can give it to him, you know, what else is there for him to be concerned about.

KEILAR: And so what do you make of this visit today by Maria Corina Machado to the White House? It's closed press which is kind of different than we see from the visits of some guests to the White House. When the president really wants to demonstrate the fanfare he's going to do it. And I know that our Kristen Holmes just said the Nobel Peace Prize isn't transferable but we have heard Machado talk about wanting to give it to Trump. That may be a gesture that he would welcome.

What do you make of this visit kind of being tamped down at least so far? I don't know, maybe that could change.

SMITH: Yeah, a couple. Well, first of all, Trump should be happy. He's got the FIFA Peace Prize. I mean he's got his Peace Prize, why isn't he happy about that? Second of all, let us just pause for a moment to recognize how pathetic it is that the president of the United States has that type of an ego when we've got all manner of different issues that are really important to the US. Drug smuggling, the narco terrorist groups, you know the chaos in Venezuela and Latin America and here we are arguing about how best to assuage President Trump's ego.

As far as the Machado meeting, I think the people who do want democracy in Venezuela, obviously, that includes Mr. Machado, and others really pushed hard to try to say don't shut us out don't completely close off this option. They wanted to get access to Trump. As for why Trump took the meeting, I think he doesn't want to appear to be completely closed off to that option. But the fact that it was a closed meeting, the fact that we're having all this talk about a Nobel Peace Prize sort of undermines the idea that President Trump is ever going to support Mr. Machado and the democratic movement in Venezuela.

KEILAR: And yet, there was an assessment from within the Trump administration that Machado or another opposition leader, someone in the opposition may not be positioned to provide stability in Venezuela. Do you agree with that?

SMITH: Well, I think that that might be the case in the short term, depending on what's going on there. But the question is, now that we have the power and influence that we have in Venezuela, are we going to use that to create the atmosphere where it becomes possible or is President Trump just going to work with the remnants of the Maduro regime and keep things where they're at?

If you want to get to democracy, it's going to take efforts. For one thing, it's going to take us stop telling the Venezuelan people that we want to run their lives and take their oil. That's not going to make them inclined to support anything that we do. So there is a path to getting there, maybe not today. No, I would not advocating taking Mr. Machado, plopping her down in Caracas and trying to say you're in charge now. Steps need to be taken. The problem is President Trump doesn't seem inclined to take those steps.

KEILAR: Two sources say the Trump administration is preparing to have private military contractors sort of to allow them to protect oil and energy assets in Venezuela, not to deploy U.S. troops there. Doesn't seem to be much of an appetite for that domestically, but I also wonder how you are viewing this move and if you see it as a way to circumvent Congress.

SMITH: Well, he circumvented Congress in a thousand different ways. I think it's more a way for him to try to minimize the risk to him of engaging in this. If you've got U.S. troops in Venezuela and something goes wrong and we lose U.S. service members, they're killed or wounded, that is a bigger problem than if you have a private contractor down there. So, I think

[14:10:00]

President Trump is comfortable circumventing Congress in a thousand different ways. I think here, he's just trying to limit his own exposure. And again, let's focus on that policy, the policy of the U.S. is to hire private contractors to go in and take the oil from Venezuela? That's what our foreign policy is now? That is really going to undermine peace and stability in the Western Hemisphere and beyond, if we get back to might makes right, there are no rules, take what you can. Others will learn that lesson and it will undermine peace and security for us in this country and frankly, across the world.

KEILAR: On Iran, I want to ask you about the president saying yesterday that the killings have stopped and crediting his threats to strike, essentially, Iran if they were to continue killing protesters or if they were to execute protesters in particular. Have you received verification that these killings have stopped?

SMITH: No, it's highly unlikely that they have, but this is a classic approach from Trump. He wants to basically say that everything that he does has this powerful positive impact on everything. Remember, he's running around saying that there have been no murders in Washington, D.C., since he sent the National Guard in here. That's not true, not even close to true. You have to remember Trump does not live in the fact-based universe that the rest of us lived in. He lives in a world that he creates, so he sent a threat, Iran responded. There is still a lot of unrest in Iran.

I think the more interesting thing is why Trump chose that path at this point instead of being more belligerent and actually launching military strikes in Iran to support the protesters, which I still think is a possibility, but his comments yesterday, hey, all good, no one's getting killed anymore, I think was maybe a way for him also to sort of step back from drawing a red line that he might not want to cross.

KEILAR: And what about today when the press secretary was asked if she was aware -- she was asked to respond to Iranian state media putting up a threat of the president talking, essentially, saying that next time, there won't be a miss and this was using video of the Butler assassination. That's something that has been out there for a day. I think most of us have seen that. What did you make of her saying she hadn't seen that?

SMITH: Yeah. I'm surprised you hadn't seen that, really this is an issue. I mean, ever since the killing of Soleimani, Iran has been threatening a variety of people in the administration. Even before then, Iran has not been shy about making these types of threats and it points to the level of tension that exists between Iran and the U.S. And don't get me wrong, the world would be a better place if there was a different government in Iran, an Iranian government that was looking after the Iranian people instead of trying to export revolution and basically, destroying their country.

There's tension there, how we manage that is really important because we don't want to see it blow up and get worse.

KEILAR: Congressman Adam Smith, thanks for being with us.

SMITH: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still to come, more on President Trump's threat to deploy troops to Minnesota as tensions escalate. The mayor of Minneapolis says the current immigration operation in his city is not sustainable. A city leader joins us to discuss what's happening there.

Plus, several former NCAA players have been charged in a college basketball gambling scheme. And then later, YouTube now has a way for parents to block or limit their teens from endlessly scrolling short videos. We have that and much more coming up on "CNN News Central." (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:18:01]

SCIUTTO: Back to the Breaking News out of Minnesota. President Trump making a new significant threat, warning once again, that he will invoke the Insurrection Act to stamp out increasingly tense clashes between protesters and federal law enforcement. Overnight, chaos erupted near the site of a second shooting involving a federal agent.

The Department of Homeland Security says the agent shot a Venezuelan national in the leg after that person began to resist arrest and "violently assault one of those officers." Earlier, White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt was asked how President Trump will decide whether he will invoke the Insurrection Act.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEAVITT: That's only a question, frankly, Reagan, the president can answer. But the Insurrection Act is a tool at the president's disposal and I think the president's Truth Social post spoke very loud and clear to Democrats across this country, elected officials who are using their platforms to encourage violence against federal law enforcement officers, who are encouraging left-wing agitators to unlawfully obstruct legitimate law enforcement operations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Joining me now is the President of the Minneapolis City Council, Elliott Payne. Elliott, thanks so much for joining.

ELLIOTT PAYNE, PRESIDENT, MINNEAPOLIS CITY COUNCIL: Thank you for having me.

SCIUTTO: So, the president once again, saying he might invoke the Insurrection Act, the White House reserving that right. How will Minneapolis react if he does so?

PAYNE: Well, over the last weeks and even over a month, during this metro surge, our community has really showed up for our neighbors. We've been out in the streets keeping watch and patrolling. I apologize, I'm losing my voice because I've been one of those people out in the streets and using my voice to make sure that our neighbors know that we have a federal government that doesn't see them as human and is attacking them.

[14:20:00]

And I'm not just talking about our immigrant neighbors, I'm talking about civilians, I'm talking about citizens. I'm talking about everyday people just trying to get to work. They're getting harassed on the streets with fully militarized forces, and they're conducting themselves in a completely unprofessional and unconstitutional manner. And so, many of our residents are out there legally observing the operations of our federal government to ensure that our constitutional rights are not getting violated. And what I'm seeing firsthand is our constitutional rights being violated.

SCIUTTO: The president, the DHS secretary, the White House press secretary, they say those agents are there to protect the people of Minneapolis. Are they protecting them?

PAYNE: If you think protection means murdering people and shooting them in the head, then I don't want that protection from our federal government. We come from the city where George Floyd was murdered and our local government at that time, their official story was that George Floyd died from a medical incident. If it wasn't for those constitutional observers, we would have never known the truth of George Floyd. We wouldn't have known the truth of Derek Chauvin being a murderer.

We have lived this already. We're living it again and this time, we're living it through our federal government. I ran for City Council because I believe our local government needed to be better and that we needed to be trusted by our community. We are seeing that lack of trust and that lack of integrity coming directly from our federal government right now, not just in how they're conducting their operations in the street, but how they're completely lying to our community about those operations.

SCIUTTO: Last month, as you know, the City Council strengthened what's known as a separation ordinance, disallowing city officials and this includes the police, from participating in federal immigration enforcement. Is that policy working, do you believe? Or is it having, as well, unintended consequences?

PAYNE: So, we can have a political debate about the spectrum of immigration acceptance within our country. I happen to live in a political space where I think we should have an inclusive and welcoming immigration policy in the United States of America. Other people may disagree with those politics. We debate those through democracy and through passing laws.

What we're seeing happening right now is not a process of democracy. This is a process of authoritarianism. If you believe that we should be enforcing our immigration laws, then you shouldn't be sending the military to the city of Minneapolis. You should be perp walking corporate leaders who are hiring undocumented immigrants as part of their workforce, if that's what you truly care about.

I tend to care that we have a welcoming and inclusive society that is built on multiculturalism, and I'd like to see our federal laws reflect that, and that's why I got into politics myself, but that is a -- that's a process that we use democracy to resolve. This is not democracy. This is authoritarianism, point-blank.

SCIUTTO: Elliott Payne, President of the Minneapolis City Council, we appreciate you joining.

PAYNE: Thank you for having me.

SCIUTTO: Another story we're following, former NCAA players are among those charged now in a federal bust for rigging college basketball games. We're going to have new details about who is involved, how many games affected ahead. Plus, Americans are not on the side of the president when it comes to whether the U.S. should take control of Greenland. We're going to break down new poll numbers from CNN. Stay with us.

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[14:28:15]

KEILAR: The Associated Press is reporting more than a dozen college basketball players, some from Division One schools, have been indicted in an alleged betting scheme to rig games. CNN Sports Anchor, Don Riddell is here. Don, the U.S. Attorney describing the allegations as international criminal conspiracy. Tell us about this.

DON RIDDELL, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yeah. Another day, another sports betting scandal I'm afraid. This one involving professional basketball games in China and college games in the U.S. As you say, more than a dozen college players have been charged with fixing games.

In total, 26 people are in trouble with the Feds, who say they've uncovered a scheme that involved players being lured with a promise of payment in exchange for underperforming during their games. And there was a pretty big incentive to do so. The bribe payments to the players ranging from $10,000 to $30,000. According to the indictment, the fixers would then bet big against those players' teams, defrauding sports books, and of course, other bettors, among the defendants.

Fifteen of them played for D1 NCAA schools during the 2024-'25 season. Several of them are still playing this year and in fact, four of them have played in the last few days. According to prosecutors, the fixers began targeting Chinese games in 2023 and after successfully manipulating results there, they brought it to the college game here.

The charges which have been filed in Philadelphia include bribery, wire fraud, and conspiracy. And this, as I say, is just the latest betting scandal to have rocked the sports world recently. Sports gambling has been legalized in many states over the last few years and through the first three quarters of last year, it was an industry worth more than $11 billion. Sadly, this kind of corruption seems to be a byproduct of gambling in sports.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID METCALF, U.S. ATTORNEY, EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA: When criminals pollute the purity of sports by manipulating competition --