In an Oval Office press spray on Thursday morning shortly after the news broke, the POTUS had this to say:
"Well, I feel very badly. I haven't been dealing with him for a long period of time as most of the people in this room know. He was involved in our campaign, He worked for Goldman Sachs. He worked for a lot of companies, but he was involved likewise in our campaign, and for a small part of the administration, very early on. Haven't been dealing with him at all."
"I know nothing about the project other than I didn't like when I read about it, I didn't like it. I said, this is for government. This isn't for private people. And it sounded to me like showboating. And I think I let my opinion be very strongly stated at the time. I didn't like it. It was showboating and maybe looking for funds, but you'll have to see what happens. I think it's a very sad thing for Mr. Bannon. I think it's surprising. But this was something is you know, just by reading social media and by reading, whatever it is, and by speaking to Mike and Mike and all of them, I didn't like that project. I thought that was a project that was being done for showboating reasons. I don't know that he was in charge. I didn't know any of the other people even. But it's, it's sad it's very sad."
Asked about what the charges say about a "culture of lawlessness" in his administration:
POTUS: "There was lawlessness in the Obama administration. They spied on our campaign illegally. And if you look at all of the things and all of the scandals they had, they had tremendous lawlessness. But I know nothing about -- I was not involved in the project. I have no idea who was. But I can tell you I didn't know the people that -- three people that were talked about were people that I did not know. I don't believe I ever met them. I don't think that should be a privately financed wall. I don't think -- it's too complex. It's too big. And we're now up to 300 miles almost -- in another week we can have -- we will be up to 300 miles of wall at the highest level. They were even having construction problems. I was reading, the little I know about it I got from you. I was reading where they were having construction problems with the wall that they were -- they had a small area just to show people they could build a wall and they were having a lot of problems where it was toppling over and other things. And I didn't like it because I didn't want to be associated with that. We've built a very powerful wall. It was a wall that is virtually impossible to get through. It's very, very tough. It's very strong. And it's everything the Border Patrol wanted. And I didn't want to have a wall that was going to be an inferior wall, and I felt this was going to be an inferior wall."