If Republicans are waiting for President Obama to express any regret for having freed an American prisoner of war, they’ll apparently be waiting for quite a while.

Obama appeared alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron at a press conference in Brussels earlier, and a reporter asked the U.S. leader, “Have you been surprised by the backlash that’s been whipped up by your decision to do a deal to free Bowe Bergdahl? And what do you think is motivating that?”

“I’ll repeat what I said two days ago. We have a basic principle: We do not leave anybody wearing the American uniform behind. We had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated and we were deeply concerned about, and we saw an opportunity and we seized it. And I make no apologies for that.

“We had discussed with Congress the possibility that something like this might occur. But because of the nature of the folks that we were dealing with and the fragile nature of these negotiations, we felt it was important to go ahead and do what we did. And we’re now explaining to Congress the details of how we moved forward. But this basic principle that we don’t leave anybody behind and this basic recognition that that often means prisoner exchanges with enemies is not unique to my administration – it dates back to the beginning of our Republic.