President Trump on Thursday said he feels “very badly” that his former adviser Steve Bannon was arrested and indicted in connection with an online fundraising campaign that allegedly defrauded donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars while calling the project “inappropriate.”
The president, during a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, told reporters that he hasn’t dealt with Bannon, who worked on his 2016 campaign as CEO and at the White House as a senior adviser, in a “very long period of time.”
“I feel very badly. I haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time,” Trump told reporters. “I haven’t been dealing with him at all.”
The president said he didn’t “know anything about the project at all” but also said he “didn’t like” it.
“I thought it was being done for showboating reasons,” Trump said.