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Trump Gaggles with Press Before Departing the White House, Jan. 9, 2026

January 9, 2026 · The White House · 0:01:50

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

What happened

President Donald Trump took questions before departing the White House on January 9, 2026, hours after meeting oil and gas executives at the White House. “We just had a great meeting with the oil executives. We sort of formed a deal. They’re going to be going in with hundreds of billions of dollars in drilling oil, and it’s good for Venezuela and it’s great for the United States,” he said. “A lot of money is going to be made. Oil prices will come down, although they are getting down pretty good now without it. And it was a great meeting we had today with the biggest companies anywhere in the world.”

Asked about an upcoming meeting with the president of Colombia, he said he expected it to go very well; asked about South American concern over the Venezuela operation, he answered: “Everyone’s going to be happy in South America… Venezuela’s happy. I think they’re all going to be happy.” He also defended the White House ballroom project, saying “people love it. They love the ballroom. We need it.”

Why it matters

The gaggle is the President’s first on-record summary of the January 9 oil-executives meeting — the Venezuela drilling arrangement in his own headline figure — delivered the same day as the meeting whose full record is paged next in this backfill, and two days before he quantified the first oil shipment aboard Air Force One.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the “hundreds of billions of dollars” in Venezuela drilling, as stated by the President at this gaggle, is the headline claim against which the January 11 shipment figure is tracked. Noted for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press Before Departing the White House, Jan. 9, 2026,” The White House, January 9, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President in the exchange.