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Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One, Jan. 4, 2026

January 4, 2026 · The White House · 0:37:25

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump took questions aboard Air Force One on January 4, 2026 — the day after the operation that captured Nicolás Maduro — traveling with Senator Lindsey Graham, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Stephen Miller, among others. On the service members injured in the operation, he said he had calls in to them and that “they’re all in good shape,” describing troops coming off a helicopter under fire, with one helicopter hit badly but everything and everyone brought back, and no one killed.

On who runs Venezuela now, pressed on whether he had spoken with the newly sworn-in leadership, the President said: “Don’t ask me who’s in charge because I’ll give you an answer and it’ll be very controversial… That means we’re in charge.” He said he had not yet spoken with Delcy Rodríguez himself but that others had, and that “she’s cooperating,” as he stated it. On elections, he said the country first has to be fixed: “We have to bring it back… we’re going to have to have big investments by the oil companies to bring back the infrastructure,” with the oil companies, as he put it, ready to go in and rebuild what the United States originally built.

Why it matters

This gaggle is the President’s first extended on-the-record account of the day after the Maduro capture: the “we’re in charge” formulation, the cooperation claim about Venezuela’s sworn-in leadership, and the sequencing — rebuild first, elections after — that the January 9 oil executives meeting and the January 11 gaggle paged in this collection then develop.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the Venezuela sequencing stated here — U.S. direction of the country, oil-company rebuilding of the infrastructure, elections deferred until the country is “fixed” — is the dated posture against which the Venezuela file is tracked. Noted for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One, Jan. 4, 2026,” Air Force One, January 4, 2026 (official upload, embedded above; published January 5, 2026). All characterizations as stated by the President in the exchange.