Live updates: Trump meets with oil executives at White House – NBC News

January 09, 2026, 3:41 PM EST

Speaking about Venezuela, the president said that the U.S. has an “armada” nearby but that he didn’t plan to use it against Venezuelans, whom he said are getting along well with the Trump administration.

“We have an armada, a giant armada like nobody’s ever seen in that part of the world, and it’s stationed off the coast,” Trump said at the White House while meeting with U.S. oil executives. “And we are getting along so well with the people that are involved representing Venezuela that I don’t think we’re going to have any, I don’t think it’s going to be necessary to do the second wave.”

During his remarks at a roundtable with U.S. oil executives, the president announced that the companies are prepared to spend $100 billion to rebuild the oil infrastructure in Venezuela.

“The plan is for them to spend — meaning our giant oil companies — will be spending at least $100 billion of their money, not the government’s money,” Trump told reporters.

He added, “They don’t need government money, but they need government protection and need government security that when they spend all this money, it’s going to be there so they get the money back and make a very nice return. The plan is for them to spend at least $100 million to rebuild the capacity and the infrastructure necessary.”

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan will invite former special counsel Jack Smith to testify in a public hearing, a source familiar confirmed to NBC News. This comes after Smith sat for an eight-hour closed-door deposition with the committee in December. 

Politico first reported the news today. 

“After Republicans forced Jack Smith into a backroom interrogation and rejected our calls for an open public hearing, now they decide they want a public hearing with Jack Smith after all,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Judiciary Democrat. He added that a public hearing is “a win for truth-seeking Americans and yet another looming humiliation for Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans.” 

The Judiciary Committee released the entire transcript and video of the closed-door deposition. Smith told lawmakers that his team found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The president’s roundtable with oil executives is set to kick off momentarily. It comes as the president all week has been promoting his plan to sell Venezuelan oil and allow American oil companies to revitalize the oil infrastructure in the South American nation.

In a post on Truth Social this afternoon, Trump said he will host Colombian President Gustavo Petro at the White House in February.

“I look forward to having a meeting with Gustavo Petro, the President of Colombia, in the White House, during the first week of February,” he wrote. “I am sure it will work out very well for Colombia, and the U.S.A., but, cocaine and other drugs must be STOPPED from coming into the United States.”

Trump has long accused Petro of supporting the manufacturing of cocaine in Colombia.

Last week, after the military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of that country’s president, Trump told reporters when asked about Petro, “Well, he has cocaine mills. He has factories where he makes cocaine. And yeah, I think I stick by my first statement. He’s making cocaine. They’re sending it into the United States. So he does have to watch his ass.”

In October, in a post on Truth Social, Trump called Petro an “illegal drug dealer,” writing, “President Gustavo Petro, of Colombia, is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia. It has become the biggest business in Colombia, by far, and Petro does nothing to stop it.”

The Group of Seven, or G7, summit in France “kindly shifted” its dates to “accommodate” Trump’s schedule, according to a White House official. The original dates were slated for June 14 to June 16 in Evian-les-Bains and now will take place a day later, from June 15 to June 17, so that Trump can participate. 

 “As the leader of the free world, our partners believed that President Trump’s attendance at the G7 Summit was essential,” the official said. June 14 is Trump’s birthday and it’s also when a major UFC event will be held on the South Lawn of the White House.

A White House official says the administration is “reviewing protocols regarding economic data releases” after Trump last night posted some information from today’s jobs report well before the information was officially announced.

Trump’s post, which went out at 8:20 p.m. ET yesterday, showed that the private sector added 654,000 jobs “since January.” That data accurately matched the jobs report, which did not come out until 8:30 a.m. ET today.

A White House official conceded there “was an inadvertent public disclosure of aggregate data that was partially derived from pre-released information.” 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced today that the Trump administration is launching several initiatives to investigate alleged fraud in Minnesota.

At a press conference in Minneapolis, Bessent said his department will “target fraud here in Minnesota, and the Minnesota protocols will serve as a genesis and a launching pad for investigations into other states.”

Bessent said the administration has “followed the money” in Minnesota and has identified money that have serviced businesses “that may have transferred taxpayer funds overseas.” He said one of his teams “has just provided formal notification to these businesses that they are under investigation.”

Three Democratic senators urged Apple and Google to remove Elon Musk’s apps X and Grok from their app stores yesterday evening after xAI’s Grok artificial intelligence tool had been used to flood X with sexualized nonconsensual images of real people.

Hours later, X adjusted how Grok operated on the social media site, restricting its image generation to paying premium subscribers, and seemingly restricting what types of images Grok can create on X.

The Grok reply bot on X has churned out thousands of sexualized images an hour this week, mostly of women but at times of children. Early today, it appeared to have pivoted to limiting that feature on the social media app. But on the stand-alone Grok app and website, Grok will still create sexualized deepfakes.

Read the full story here.

A U.S. delegation of diplomatic and security personnel from the Venezuela Affairs Unit, including Chargé d’Affaires John T. McNamara, traveled to Caracas today “to conduct an initial assessment for a potential phased resumption of operations,” a U.S. official said.

The department is making preparations to allow for a reopening of the U.S, Embassy “should the president make that decision,” a senior official confirmed earlier this week.

Mass anti-government protests are growing across Iran where demonstrators have taken to the streets to demand a regime change. Now authorities are trying to stifle the unrest by shutting down the internet nationwide, making it harder for protesters to organize and get their message to the world. It comes as Trump is warning the U.S. could intervene on the side of the demonstrators. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded that the president should focus on problems in his own country and claimed the demonstrators are being stoked from abroad. NBC’s Richard Engel reports for “TODAY.”

The White House is considering issuing an executive order in the coming days to address what the president views as an unacceptably slow permitting process that is limiting the rebuilding of homes destroyed in last year’s devastating Southern California wildfires.

The administration is drafting an order that would allow builders receiving federal funds to self-certify their compliance with California state and local building permits, circumventing local authorities to speed the building process, a source familiar with the White House deliberations told NBC News.

Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt in the year since the Palisades and Eaton fires ripped through Southern California, killing 31 people and destroying more than 16,000 structures, mostly homes, The Associated Press reported, citing local and state data. 

About 900 homes are under construction and could be completed this year, the news agency reported. 

The White House’s proposed order would also direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to investigate California’s use of other disaster-related federal funds, according to the source familiar with its contents. Trump has not yet signed off on the final order. 

The White House unveiled its plans yesterday for Trump’s expansive ballroom inside a newly constructed East Wing, which includes a one-story addition. The addition would be as tall as the main White House structure, with the ballroom spanning 22,000 square feet and able to seat 1,000 guests for dinners and other events. NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell reports for the “TODAY” show.

The United States has seized another oil tanker, two U.S. officials told NBC News today, as it works to control the flow of oil to and from Venezuela.

The Olina was seized overnight in the Caribbean Sea, an operation conducted by the Coast Guard and Joint Task Force Southern Spear.

It’s the latest such enforcement action, days after the U.S. seizure of the Bella 1, a Russian-flagged “shadow fleet” tanker that fled the American blockade and led to a weekslong chase. The U.S. also announced the seizure Wednesday of another sanctioned tanker, the Sophia, which it said was “conducting illicit activities in the Caribbean Sea.”

Read the full story here.

The president said ahead of a meeting with oil executives at the White House today that they would spend at least $100 billion in Venezuela.

“At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” Trump said in his post on Truth Social this morning.

In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity last night, Trump said: “We’re going to meet with the biggest oil people in the world. They’re all coming here, the top 14 companies are coming here. They’re going to go in. They’re going to rebuild the whole oil infrastructure. They’re going to spend at least 100 billion dollars, and it’s an unbelievable oil that they have, and an unbelievable quality of oil and amount of oil.”

The Kremlin has thanked the U.S. for the release of two Russian crew members from the oil tanker seized in the North Atlantic after a weekslong chase.

Moscow sent a submarine and a destroyer to guard the Bella 1, both of which “left very quickly when we arrived,” Trump said last night in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.

“They decided not to mess around with us,” Trump added. The oil tanker had fled the U.S. blockade of Venezuela, changing its name to the Marinera and hoisting a Russian flag.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Munro shadowing the Bella 1 during the maritime interdiction operation. Department of Defense / via AP

Iran’s supreme leader signaled a hard line against protesters rocking the Islamic Republic, accusing them of acting on behalf of Trump as authorities struggling to contain the unrest shut the country off from the world.

In his first major address to the nation since widespread demonstrations erupted almost two weeks ago, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said protesters were “ruining their own streets to make the president of another country happy,” according to news agencies.

After Trump’s repeated threats to intervene, Khamenei said the president should focus on problems in the U.S. 

Read the full story here.

Trump said the U.S. will expand operations against drug cartels, warning that gangs are “running” Mexico.

“We are going to start now hitting land. With regard to the cartels, the cartels are running Mexico,” he said on Fox News last night. “It’s very, very sad to watch, and see what’s happened to that country.”

Trump has ratcheted up his criticism of the government of Mexico — whose powerful and violent cartels traffic huge amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin and marijuana — since the operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro on Saturday.

Trump said this morning that he had canceled “the previously expected second Wave of Attacks, which looks like it will not be needed” on Venezuela because of the country’s cooperation after he captured President Nicolás Maduro.

“The U.S.A. and Venezuela are working well together, especially as it pertains to rebuilding, in a much bigger, better, and more modern form, their oil and gas infrastructure,” Trump said in an early morning post on Truth Social.

The president added that “all ships will stay in place for safety and security purposes,” referring to the U.S. blockade of oil to and from the Latin American country.