LAUER: Let me ask you about some of the things you've said about Vladimir Putin. You said, "I will tell you, in terms of leadership, he's getting an A, our president is not doing so well." And when referring to a comment that Putin made about you, I think he called you a brilliant leader, you said, "It's always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his country and beyond."

TRUMP: Well, he does have an 82 percent approval rating, according to the different pollsters, who, by the way, some of them are based right here. Look, look …

LAUER: He's also a guy who annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, supports Assad in Syria, supports Iran, is trying to undermine our influence in key regions of the world, and according to our intelligence community, probably is the main suspect for the hacking of the DNC computers.

TRUMP: Well, nobody knows that for a fact. But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?

LAUER: But do you want to be complimented by that former KGB officer?

TRUMP: Well, I think when he calls me brilliant, I'll take the compliment, okay? The fact is, look, it's not going to get him anywhere. I'm a negotiator. We're going to take back our country. You look at what's happening to our country; you look at the depleted military; you look at the fact that we've lost our jobs. We're losing our jobs like we're a bunch of babies. We're going to take back our country, Matt. The fact that he calls me brilliant or whatever he calls me is going to have zero impact.

LAUER: But the fact that you say you can get along with him, do you think the day...

TRUMP: I think I'd be able to get along with him.

LAUER: Do you think the day that you become president of the United States, he's going to change his mind on some of these key issues?

TRUMP: Possibly. It's possible. I don't know, Matt. It's possible. And it's not going to have any impact. If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him. I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, 'Oh, isn't that a terrible thing' -- the man has very strong control over a country.

Now, it's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader. We have a divided country. We have a country where you have Hillary Clinton with her emails that nobody's ever seen where she deletes 33,000 emails, and that's after getting a subpoena from Congress. If you do that in private business, you get thrown in jail.