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Trump: Venezuela to Hand Over 30-50M Barrels of Oil to U.S.; White House Discussing Options to Obtain Greenland. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 07, 2026 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:18]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Audie Cornish.

And the White House message to the new leaders in Venezuela: Sure, you can be in charge, but the U.S. has some demands.

Plus, Trump's new foreign policy sounds like a blast from the distant past.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: They now call it the "Donroe document (ph)."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: The president's approach to Latin America. Is it a risk to global order? And would the U.S. use troops to seize Greenland?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know what timeline we're living in where they're talking about taking over Greenland.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Hold on. NATO has now entered the chat.

Today, Congress gets a classified briefing as Trump worries about his grip on power.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They'll find a reason to impeach me

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And did the president just show his cards?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The potential of that oil reserve for Venezuela and the American people is unlimited. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, we were told it was all about narco-trafficking. And so, that's where we begin.

Is the administration saying the quiet part out loud? I mean, for days, the president has been hinting that the capture of Nicolas Maduro is about more than just narco-terrorism. And surprise, surprise, the president is saying Venezuela will turn over 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to be sold at market price.

And so where is that money going? He wrote on Truth Social "that money will be controlled by me as president of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!"

So, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Trump actually plans to meet with oil executives from Chevron, ExxonMobil, and others. That's going to happen this Friday.

But this is all coming just hours before the House and Senate are set to receive a classified briefing on the operation in Venezuela.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ED MARKEY (D-MA): He's invading Venezuela for the oil and gas industry. It's all part of a pay-to-play.

SEN. PETER WELCH (D-VT): In their new policies. Might makes right. If we want it, we'll get it. And we'll use our military to accomplish that. And this is all about the oil.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): America will be in charge of your oil. I can see how this will destroy goodwill in Venezuela.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK. Joining me now in the group chat today, Garrett Graff, journalist and historian and author of "The Devil Reached Toward the Sky"; Charlie Dent, former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania; and Antjuan Seawright, Democratic strategist.

OK, gentlemen, so I want to start with this conversation about oil. It preoccupies American policy makers and leaders, obviously, because of the Iraq War.

We were talking about this and the idea that sort of we've seen this movie before.

Here's Jasmine Crockett, who's a Democratic representative, of course, running for office in Texas. And she was on "The View." And let me let you hear what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JASMINE CROCKETT (D-TX): So, again, this idea that he is doing this for a great reason. He made it clear, because it's my understanding that when he went into that press conference, he said at least 20 times, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He sure did.

CROCKETT: Listen to him when he speaks. He's telegraphing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GARRETT GRAFF, JOURNALIST AND HISTORIAN: I think in this term, one of the lessons that we are learning about Donald Trump is you have to listen to what he says, that -- that there was, I think the sense during the first term that sort of Trump blustered and, you know, the whole take him seriously, but not literally. Et cetera, et cetera.

And in this term, it's very clear he is doing what he is telling us he is going to do --

CORNISH: But why do you think --

GRAFF: -- for the reasons that he's telling us he's doing IT.

Cornish: Why do you think oil is this, like, key word that gets us all sort of like, wait a second?

GRAFF: Well, I think for Donald Trump -- there are two different reasons. I mean, two different parts of that question. Right?

So, the first is why Donald Trump cares. And Donald Trump cares, because Donald Trump is caught in this 1980s mentality of sort of when Donald Trump thought the world worked well.

And for him, that was about -- that was an era when controlling oil was important.

What's fascinating to me about this is the rest of the world is moving past oil. And it's not clear that a lot of these companies actually think that there is real profit to be made in Venezuela's oil.

[06:05:03]

CORNISH: Or if they want to wait, for how long? I mean, we should know that Iraq right now, there is some headlines about it, signing a deal with Exxon to help develop a large oil field all these years later.

BP finally getting a green light from the Iraqi government for a project in Kirkuk.

Can you talk about, for Republicans who, for a long time, have wanted to be involved in the world? Right? They've been holding back because of "America first."

What do you see in who is speaking out? Is there anyone surprising to you about who's speaking out?

CHARIE DENT, FORMER PENNSYLVANIA REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: Well, Don Bacon's been saying quite a bit. And I know there are others who are quietly murmuring right now.

But I think what -- you know, Garrett mentioned the 1980s. I feel like it's the 1880s, in some respects. We're going back to 19th Century spheres of influence.

And you have to look at what's happening with Donald Trump right now in the Caribbean, in Greenland, in the context of the national security strategy that was just outlined, 29 pages. And it was all about the Western Hemisphere. This is our sphere.

I mean, they barely even mentioned Russia.

CORNISH: Yes. I read that document, actually.

DENT: Strategic stability is about all we heard there. And a lot of talk about the Indo Pacific, but mostly about the Western Hemisphere. And it's clear.

CORNISH: So, with this war powers vote. I mean, you guys help me. You're my congressional people. Is this for show? Is this so lawmakers can kind of get up and register dismay, but not actually stop the White House?

ANTJUAN SEAWRIGHT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, you can't undo the action. And this president has simply ignored the congressional powers throughout this second term of the presidency.

But I will tell you, "Drill, baby, drill" was certainly a loud part of the Trump platform as a candidate when he ran for reelection. So, no one should be surprised by this.

CORNISH: But I think people thought he meant Alaska. But yes.

SEAWRIGHT: Sure. But also, people did not expect him to be so aggressive in everything he's done and certainly ignore the rule of law, which he's consistently done.

But I would also say this idea that some in the conservative world believe this was about drugs is just silly and foolishness, considering that Mexico, and what they do with fentanyl, and the fact that he was able to, that he pardoned the former Honduran leader.

I think this is very consistent with Trump being Trump. And this is all about Trump.

And I would finally add, I don't think this is the posture of someone who's planning to leave the White House in three years. Because he's been very aggressive about his foreign policy approach and taking over countries. I think that's very unprecedented.

CORNISH: Your way of describing it is actually quite similar to Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, ahead of this meeting.

SEAWRIGHT: Jeesh. That wasn't on my bingo card.

CORNISH: Oh, well, then write down your "X," because here's Thomas Massie.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): I don't think there'll be any clarification that comes from this administration. They still haven't even figured out how they're running that country.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Can the U.S. actually run another sovereign country?

MASSIE: No, we can't run another country.

PAUL: I think bombing a capital and removing the head of state is, by all definitions, war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, there's a lot of people who say, like, look, they're not going to go to the mat for Maduro, right? Like that this is not a hill they want to die on.

But politically, do you think Congress, as we heard from a lawmaker yesterday, is going to say, Well, we hold the power of the purse. You're going to need money to do this. And so, yes, you do have to come to us.

GRAFF: I think there's that. I think there's also the fact that Congress has the war-making authority, that that this is --

CORNISH: But they never use it.

GRAFF: Well, they don't use it.

DENT: They have used it, in 2001, 2003.

CORNISH: And then it lasted for 20 years, Charlie.

DENT: Well, that's -- no, I agree.

CORNISH: It was like an open-ended war authorization.

DENT: Well, it really wasn't that open-ended. But it's been interpreted that way by -- by succeeding presidents. And that's a -- that's a huge issue.

SEAWRIGHT: But I also do not want us to not understand the big picture.

This is strategic for Donald Trump. This is a pure distraction from the issues that America faces at home. We have an affordability crisis, from health care to everyday basic necessities.

This is a good way to distract the attention from that. And that's what Donald Trump, and that's what the second term of Trump has always been about: dangling a nugget.

CORNISH: It's an expensive and violent way, though. I'm sort of -- where are you going with this?

SEAWRIGHT: It doesn't matter. Because he is underwater on every single issue going into a very consequential midterm that he campaigned on in the 2024 cycle.

He will be responsible for Republicans losing the majority in the House and potentially the Senate. And so, this is a good way to distract the news cycle for weeks on top of weeks.

CORNISH: Well, we're not fully distracted, because we're going to talk later today about that narrowing majority, among other things. So, you guys stay with us.

Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, the power struggle, the president's support, as we just heard, shrinking in the House. His plea to his party.

Plus, federal agents swarm Minnesota in the largest DHS operation ever.

And why the president wants to take Greenland and whether that's even possible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, NBC'S "THE TONIGHT SHOW": Trump said we need Greenland for national security purposes. Now, he's hoping to stop the steady flow of drugs coming in from Greenland? People getting high on sardines or something?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:13:54]

CORNISH: It's almost 15 minutes past the hour, so here is your morning roundup.

The Justice Department says the Brown University mass shooter planned the attack for years. They found that information in a series of videos he left behind.

And in the footage, he also confessed to the murders of two students at the school and an MIT professor. He, however, never explained why he did it.

The videos were found in an electronic device in the storage unit where the man's body was found, and that was days after the killings.

And the Department of Homeland Security is calling it its largest operation ever.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was on the ground in St. Paul Tuesday as around 2,000 federal agents are deployed to the Twin Cities. Law enforcement sources tell CNN about this. DHS says it arrested more than 150 people suspected of being in the country illegally.

Minneapolis has been on the administration's radar amid a massive welfare fraud scandal.

And $10 billion. That's how much money President Trump is freezing in funding for childcare and social services in five other Democratic-led states.

The Department of Health suggests, without evidence, that the states are using the funds fraudulently. Those impacted: if you live in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York.

[06:15:11]

And after the break on CNN THIS MORNING, it's the question we've been asking all week: Who is really in charge? The new Venezuelan leader is ready to show her might.

Plus, the "Donroe Doctrine" and the risk the president's new foreign policy might pose to the global order.

Meantime, good morning, Michigan. You got a little bit of snow on the ground. You can see it there in Marquette County.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The United States proved once again that we have the most powerful, most lethal, most sophisticated, and most fearsome -- It's a fearsome military -- on planet Earth, and it's not even close.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:20:09]

CORNISH: President Trump, taking a victory lap after the military operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolas Maduro.

And the White House is not ruling out using the military again to pursue what the administration is calling the "Donroe Doctrine." So, what exactly is that?

Well, refers to the Monroe Doctrine, when James Monroe told Europe the U.S. would not allow further colonization in South America.

Later, Teddy Roosevelt adds international police power, right? So, basically, we're going to police this part of the hemisphere.

But that brings us to President Trump, who now wants to enlist and expand in the Western Hemisphere. So, what does that look like?

The president has openly wondered about taking action in places like Colombia, Mexico, Cuba. And they haven't refused to rule out a military option to acquire Greenland, which the president claims the U.S. needs. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DON BACON (R-NE): We're NATO allies. We have bases there. We could build on that.

So, this is one of the silliest things I have heard come out of the White House in the last year, and it's unacceptable. And I hope other Republicans line up behind me and make it clear to the White House its wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining me now to discuss is Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group. Thanks so much for being with us.

IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: Good morning, Abby [SIC].

CORNISH: So, I wanted to talk to you, because you put out a report of top risks for 2026, things people are concerned about. And in the top three: U.S. political revolution. But number three was the "Donroe Doctrine." I don't know how it made the list quite so quickly, because we started hearing about it.

What is the concern about this new approach by the U.S.?

BREMMER: Well, I mean, we started talking about it a lot during the unveiling of the new national security strategy document about a month ago, when the Monroe Doctrine was there.

And it was very clear, as President Trump was escalating his ultimatums at Maduro -- you know, you leave or we're going to take you out -- that this was coming sooner or later.

It came sooner. And, of course, it came with extraordinary military success. A lot of planning going on around how to take out, how to have intelligence around them, and how not to have any American soldiers get killed in the process. That's a big win.

But the implications of this are hugely problematic for American allies around the world -- in the backyard, in Europe, and more broadly -- who have relied on the United States to actually stand up to rule of law.

And now, they're seeing that America's big, extraordinary military will be used as Trump wants to use it, in service of his interests, as he defines it. He's not going to coordinate with allies. And if you're on the wrong side of him, you better change your behavior or else.

And as you say, this starts in Venezuela without regime change, but with a willingness of the United States to keep using that military unless this new government, kind of same as the old government, starts behaving very, very differently.

CORNISH: But Ian, can I --

BREMMER: And it doesn't end there. CORNISH: Can I jump in? Because I think some people around the world

would say, how is that all different from what the U.S. used to do, only covertly, right? When there was this battle against communism, we operated, in a lot of ways, the same way in Latin American countries.

BREMMER: That's true. And operated that way against adversaries and not against allies.

And here, it's the inconsistency, and it's the lack of reliability.

So, the fact that Donald Trump is concerned about drugs and drug export, but the former president of Honduras, who was very much involved in getting drugs to the United States at scale, just as Maduro has been, is actually pardoned.

That Greenland, which is part of Denmark, a NATO ally, is suddenly at risk.

Colombia, the president doesn't like the president of Colombia, Petro, who -- but he is democratically elected. And Colombia is a military ally of the United States.

So, it's the fact that it's not about whether or not you're aligned with the U.S. It's whether or not President Trump considers you personally to be aligned with him.

CORNISH: Yes.

BREMMER: That is a pretty dramatic difference than -- than the way we think about collective security and the U.S. acting as a global policeman.

CORNISH: I want to ask you about that. Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller was talking about the administration approach. And I want you to hear it because it is at odds with that post-World War Two idea that the U.S. is backing Europe and that it's about this collectivism and cooperation. And that kind of sounds like it's out the window.

Here's Stephen Miller.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: We live in a world in which you can -- you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else.

But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:25:15]

CORNISH: Ian Bremmer, he's -- he's not wrong in a lot of ways. So, if we're at some kind of tipping point, what do you hear in that?

BREMMER: Well, the fact that the United States is embracing the so- called law of the jungle, it's a game that, long term, the Chinese will play better than the Americans.

The United States doesn't have a dictatorship. It doesn't have the same president that goes on for life as the Chinese do, for example; as the Russians do.

And that means, you know, if you decide to act in a way that is not aligned with historic American commitments, the next president can come in and undo that. Just as Trump undid a lot of what Biden did, and Biden did to Trump before him, and Trump did to Obama.

And that lack of reliability doesn't make America's adversaries act in a more irresponsible way. They're doing that anyway. It makes America's allies trust the United States less, want to hedge away from them, and act in a less coordinated fashion.

And this is why Europe is so important. Under Trump, the United States really does believe that a weaker, more divided Europe is better for the United States, because Europe -- doesn't matter if they're aligned with the U.S. in terms of values and rule of law. What matters is that they're comparatively more powerful if the E.U. can act together on trade, on the economy.

Where if the E.U. has to act separately, if you have more Brexits all over the E.U., and the U.S. supports parties like the AFD in Germany, the National Rally in France, reform in the U.K., that means the Americans can get more of what they want transactionally with individual, weaker European states.

So, the U.S. now wants a weaker, more divided E.U.; does not want a strong E.U.; doesn't think it's in its interest.

Long term, the Chinese and the Russians agree with that. They'd much rather have weaker countries that are aligned with the United States.

CORNISH: In the meantime, I'm going to leave people with an image of several flags. All the European leaders that are rallying around Greenland, really trying to take this seriously, saying NATO has made clear that the arctic region is a priority, and European allies are stepping up.

So, Ian Bremmer, I hope we can have you back as we learn what it will mean to step up. A lot of questions there.

BREMMER: Thank you.

CORNISH: Straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, it actually is your grandfather's coup. Why the president's Venezuela operation feels like a blast from the past.

Plus, we've heard the president talk about taking over Greenland for months, as we were just talking about. And the White House is maybe really discussing options. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:30:00]