Fact-checking Donald Trump: Does GOP nominee know Vladimir Putin?

DORAL, Fla. — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday walked back claims that he has a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin at least two years after he first said they knew each other.

"I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is," Trump said Wednesday during a press conference in Florida. "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."

It's not the first time Trump has addressed his relationship with the Russian leader, whom he has praised in the past. During a debate in November 2015, however, Trump claimed he and Putin did, in fact, know one-another.

"I got to know him very well because we were both on '60 Minutes,' we were stablemates," he said.

So have Trump and Putin met?

No, they haven't.

According to Time, Putin and Trump weren't anywhere near each other during the "60 Minutes" interview.

"In fact, they weren't even on the same continent," the magazine reported after the 2015 debate. "Trump was interviewed by CBS's Scott Pelley in his New York City penthouse for the season premiere of the hour-long docu-series, while Charlie Rose traveled to Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin."

It wasn't the first time Trump claimed to know Putin. While delivering the keynote address to the National Press Club in May 2014, Trump said he "spoke indirectly and directly with President Putin, who could not have been nicer. We had tremendous success."

As for whether Putin called Trump a genius, The Washington Post reported that was not true.

Cox Media Group