Transcript of Next Steps In Venezuela, GOP 2026 Roadmap, Greenland and Europe

Nicaro Maduro is out of power, but his regime in Venezuela is still firmly in place.

President Trump says the US will run the country and US companies will rebuild oil infrastructure. But what is the actual plan?

I'm Michelle Martin. That's Leila Fadel, and this is Up First from NPR News. President Trump told House Republicans he is struggling to understand voters as his party braces for tough midterm elections.

But I wish you could explain to me what the hell is going on with the mind of the public? Because we have the right policy.

Does Trump's strategy match what voters say they want?

And European leaders are uniting around Greenland after new US threats to take the territory. Trump says the US needs it for national security, and Europe says Greenland's borders are not up for grabs. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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President Trump continues to suggest a lengthy and active US role in Venezuela after capturing leader Nicolaus Maduro. Well, he said the US will run Venezuela for a period.

Trump has proposed several plans for the future of Venezuela's government and economy, with US companies playing a key role. And now, apparently, Venezuela is handing over oil to the US.

Npr's Franco Ordoña joins us now talk about all of this. Hey, Franco.

Hey, Leila.

Okay, so many questions about what's next for Venezuela, and it feels like everything is happening ad hoc. Does the President have a plan?

I mean, there really are so many questions. The truth is President Trump and his aides are not really clear about the future of Venezuela. As we've reported, they did not get behind the popular opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, saying she didn't have enough support from the people. And while there have been a lot of calls for new elections in an interview about Venezuela's future, Trump told BBC News it's going to take a, quote, period of time and that the US first needs to, quote, nurse the country back to health again.

Okay, so who is running the country then? Who's going to run the country?

Well, for now, Trump is backing Maduro's vice President, Delcey Rodriguez. There are also a number of other ministers from the Maduro regime who are still in charge, including his interior minister and his defense minister. I was actually talking with ambassador John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the first Trump administration. He told me that he doesn't see those officials just rolling over for Trump.

I don't think that's what they think they're doing.

I think they think they are still the Maduro regime just without Maduro.

I think it's going to be very hard, much harder than Trump understands to get them to do what he wants them to do.

Leila, it sure looks like the regime is fighting all it can to hold on, cracking down on dissent in Venezuela, arresting journalists and others. I should probably also note that Bolton has become a fierce Trump critic after he was fired from the administration. And more recently, Trump's Department of Justice is prosecuting Bolton for allegedly mishandling classified info.

Right. And there are a lot of questions about what Trump means when he says the US will run Venezuela, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Right now, while Trump's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has been having conversations with Rodriguez, a lot of eyes are also actually on Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff or Policy, Stephen Miller, who's also among the group of US officials overseeing Venezuela. Now, of course, Rubio, he's a Cuban-American from Miami, certainly well steeped in these issues, having worked on them for decades. Miller is better known for his immigration policies, and more recently, actually depicting US ruling over the hemisphere by force.

President Trump has made it clear that a lot of this is about Venezuela's oil, and he made a pretty stunning announcement last night on Truth Social. What did he say?

Yeah. I mean, last night, Trump announced on Social media that Venezuela will turn over 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to the US, and then the US will sell it at market price with proceeds overseen by him.

Is this all above board? I mean, is this legal?

I mean, I think the circumstances of which Venezuela is giving this oil are also very unclear. I mean, Trump is saying that US may also subsidize the oil companies to help revive Venezuela's oil industry, which really indicates a much longer term project for the US. Trump has said it could take less than 18 months to rebuild the Venezuelan infrastructure, but experts say it'll take much longer, multiple years to fix the decaying system.

Okay, so many questions ahead. I'm sure we'll be talking again very soon. Thank you, Franco. Thank you. That's White House correspondence President, Franco Ordonias. There is something that Donald Trump can't quite wrap his head around.

But I I wish you could explain to me what the hell is going on with the mind of the public because we have the right policy.

That was the President speaking to House Republicans on Tuesday about the possibility of losing the House in this year's midterm elections. He was trying to offer his party a roadmap to win, as he called it.

So was he successful? Npr senior, political editor and correspondent, Domenico Montanaro. Watch the speech, and he joins me now. Domenico, good morning.

Hey, good morning.

So what are the headwinds Republicans are facing at the start of this year.

Yeah, I mean, never mind the headline, Changing Action in Venezuela. Right at the beginning of his speech yesterday, Trump acknowledged the vulnerable position that he and his party are in simply because of history.

We want everything. But they say that when you win the presidency, you lose the midterm.

It's true that midterms are hard on a president's party. On average, they lose more than two dozen seats. It's worse when a president's approval rating is below 50 %. Right.

We know Trump's approval rating Certainly, it's been below 50 % for a while.

Yeah, and he's facing his lowest approval ratings of his second term, and it's been in large measure because of the cost of living. But Trump didn't offer much yesterday in his speech on that. In fact, it took him 48 minutes before he even started talking about the economy at all. When he did, it was about the stock market being at historic highs, and he touted his tariffs, which have actively raised prices on many things. People have been telling posters for months that they feel Trump's policies have made the economy worse.

If he didn't talk about strategy on prices, what did he talk about?

I mean, it's culture issues, mostly. That's hardly unusual for Trump. He always seems to be weaving back to that, as he calls it. He said, Being against transgender athletes in sports is such a winning issue that he'd save it for the week before the election. He did an imitation of a woman lifting weights, one he said that his own wife doesn't like. She says it's not presidential, but he went on to do it anyway. He talked about pushing for voter ID laws, immigration and crime, which in his mind are all related, he said, and his attempts at lowering drug prices on weight loss drugs, which he referred to as fat drugs. He complained a lot about how he doesn't get the credit he feels he deserves. He lamented at one point, What have you done for me lately is the way you have to run your life nowadays.

Now, Trump was speaking on the same day that Republican congressman Doug LaMalva of California died. He was 65. Republicans already had a historically small majority. Will it be even harder now for Republicans to pass legislation?

Well, it would if there was a clear legislative agenda from Republicans in Congress, but there really isn't one right now. And a lot of those culture issues are things that Trump has gone around Congress on using executive powers. Now, one area where they could do something would be on health care. Here's what Trump said about that.

You can own health care. Figure it out. Let the money go directly to the people.

Okay, own health care. How feasible is that?

Well, Republicans, as we know, have had a long time to, quote, figure it out, more than a decade, and they haven't been able to. They've been against extending Affordable Care Act subsidies. But it's one thing to campaign on a slogan like, Let the money go to the people. It's very different to be President and to try to legislate on it. If you're a Republican in a swing district, when the ACA is about as popular as it's ever been, you got to be scratching your head wondering, what is the strategy?

And PR is Domenico Montenaro. Thank you, Domenico.

You're welcome.

Heads of state from 35 nations gathered in Paris to discuss Ukraine's future. But The meeting was overshadowed by President Trump's threats to take Greenland.

They were supposed to focus on how Ukraine's security and sovereignty will be guaranteed once the war stops. But after watching the US see Venezuela as President, several countries warned Washington not to to go further and to respect the NATO Allies's sovereignty.

We go to NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris for more. Hi, Eleanor.

Good morning, Leila.

Good morning. What did the European leaders say about Greenland?

Yeah, Leila, the issue was looming so large that it risked overshadowing the talks on Ukraine. Before they even got to work on Ukraine, they issued a statement on Greenland. France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain, and Denmark issued a statement stressing that Greenland, quote, belongs to its people and that only Denmark and Greenland can decide the island's future. But the statement did not condemn the US's aggressive language or what some see as threats to European sovereignty. No, it spoke of, quote, collective action to protect the Arctic in conjunction with NATO and the US. I spoke with Martin Cuncey, who heads the Paris office of the non-partisan think tank, the German Marshall Fund, and he said the Europeans cannot afford to antagonize the Trump administration.

The Europeans are not able to take any strong position on any issues related to US foreign policy because Europe depends so much on the US for its own defense and for the future of Ukraine.

To make clear why Europe is so involved here, this is an autonomous region of Denmark. Now, Greenland was top of mind, but was anything accomplished on Ukraine?

Yeah, absolutely. This so-called Coalition of the Willing is really getting down to the nitty-gritty of after the war. They've been meeting since last year to prepare for that when and if it comes. This coalition is led by France and the UK, but it also includes non-European nations like Japan, Australia, New Zealand. And last night, they detailed how an eventual peace would be reinforced and Russia would be kept from invading again. There would be a high tech mechanism to monitor a ceasefire on the contact line and troops. France and the UK have committed to boots on the ground to deter a future Russian attack. Let's listen to President Macron. He said there will be a multinational force on Air, land, and sea to bring a reassurance the day after a ceasefire. Macron called it a robust security guarantee for a solid and durable peace. And by the way, the US has also committed support for this force in the event of a Russian attack on Ukraine. The US was represented yesterday at the meeting by President Trump's Special Envoy, Steve Whitkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

It seems like there were actually two threats the Europeans were concerned about at this meeting.

Oh, that's exactly it, Leila. Russia is not the only threat in the room hanging over Europe. More and more, the Trump administration is seen as a threat. Most recently, because of this Bellasco's talk about Greenland, Europeans watched a jog over the weekend, Venezuela, as you said. It's not the first time President Trump has talked about Greenland, but on Sunday, he called the mineral-rich, world's largest island, so strategic and said the US needs it from a standpoint of national security. Trump hasn't ruled out taking it by force, though Secretary of State, Marco Rubio is suggesting the US buy it. I spoke with political scientist Dominique Mouysey with the Institut Montagne, and he says Europe is facing actually two enemies.

One from Russia, the classical one, and now one from the United States of America. It looks as if Trump America betrayed Ukraine and now is about to aggress Europe.

Moïse says that after perceived backtracking by the Trump administration on support for Ukraine, The continued comments about Greenland suggest an escalating threat from America.

Interesting. Npr's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris. Thank you, Eleanor. Thank you. And that's a first for Wednesday, January seventh. I'm Leila Fauden.

And I'm Michelle Martin. Up First gets you caught up and Morning Edition takes you deeper. We are live every morning on your local NPR station with reporting, interviews, and the context behind the headlines. And if you want to listen in the afternoon, you can do that, too. Download the NPR app and listen anytime. You can find all of NPR's most popular shows, including Up First and Morning Edition. So many options to get you the news you need to start your day.

Today's episode of Up First was edited by Rebecca Metzler. Kelsey Snell, Kate Bartlet, Mohamed El Radeece, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Zied Batch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Carly Strange. Our supervising producer is Michael Lipken. Join us again tomorrow.

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