Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanKenosha will be a good bellwether in 2020 At indoor rally, Pence says election runs through Wisconsin Juan Williams: Breaking down the debates MORE (R-Wis.) said in a new interview he now thinks that President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE was insulting him when he labeled him a “Boy Scout.

“I thought it was a compliment,” Ryan told The New York Times.

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But Ryan said after the several bills were passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, the president told him that he would stop referring to him with the nickname.

“So I guess he meant it as an insult all along,” the Speaker said. “I didn’t realize.”

Ryan also told the Times that that the president was just “trolling” when he said he planned to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington, D.C., for a second meeting.

“He’s just trolling you guys,” Ryan said.

When asked who he meant by “you guys," Ryan replied: “The people who don’t like him.”

“The non-Trumpers,” Ryan clarified.

When asked if he was a one of the “non-Trumpers,” Ryan said: “Sometimes, yeah."

The remarks come weeks after Trump appeared to side with Putin at a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, last month over his denial of interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Trump later said that he misspoke.

“I thought it was a really bad press conference,” Ryan said of the president's summit with Putin, adding that Trump just wants to see people's “heads explode” and have them “spend the next 12 hours talking about” the possibility of a second meeting with the Russian leader.