"He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said thank you very much to the newspaper and that was the end of it. I never met Putin," Trump said.

Trump, who has complimented Putin before, said that he would treat the dictator "firmly" but have their two countries be "friendly."

On the GOP debate stage in November, though, Trump bragged about meeting the Russian leader.

"I got to know him very well because we were both on '60 Minutes,' we were stablemates, and we did very well that night," Trump said.

Time reported that for that edition of "60 Minutes," Trump was interviewed in the United States by CBS host Charlie Rose, who then traveled to Russia to interview Putin. The two appeared on the same segment of the long-running docu-series.

Trump also said during a National Press Club luncheon in 2014 that he was in Moscow and he spoke "directly and indirectly with President Putin who could not have been nicer."