All of Donald Trump’s strengths and weaknesses were on display this week as he kicked off the homestretch of his presidential campaign.

From a walk through a county fair in Ohio, where throngs of people standing four and five deep along a paved path reached out to touch the waving Trump to a televised interview where the Republican nominee praised Vladimir Putin and denigrated American generals, it was a microcosm of Trump’s campaign. One moment he went out of his way to be accessible to the media extending reporters (including one from the Guardian) an invitation to talk with him on a flight on his private plane. Next, he proclaimed to a shouting crowd that the journalists were a corrupt extension of the Clinton campaign.

The Republican nominee started the week in Ohio where he sat down with union workers in the bar of an American Legion hall with a blinking LED sign announcing “wings on Thursday”. There, Trump waxed rhapsodic about Democrats who were now supporting him and the weakness of Barack Obama to a dozen weathered white men who looked to him as a potential savior.

The blue-collar tour continued when Trump visited nearby Goody’s Diner, which boasted its country tot bowl on a sign outside. The Republican nominee greeted individual diners there. He was particularly pleased when the first voter he met was a Hispanic who planned on voting for him. Trump pronounced “Mexican American supports Trump, Mexican American. It’s so nice” to the reporters surrounding him. Trump, looking quite pleased with himself, then gestured at the reporters and directed them to “make a note of it guys”.

Donald Trump speaks to diners during a stop at Goody’s in Brook Park, Ohio. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

The Republican nominee eventually sat down at a table with beefy, middle-aged men sitting around a pitcher of cola. He proclaimed to an assembled crowd of reporters and diners “these are the big union folks here”. A longtime Trump aide standing nearby hastened to agree: “Amazing,” he exclaimed.

The union folks must have been amazing as a heartened Trump invited reporters on his plane for a 30-minute flight afterwards. Not coincidentally though, the invitation was extended the same day Hillary Clinton started flying on the same plane as her press corps, something presidential candidates have traditionally done for six months before the election. Trump has declined to let reporters join him on his private plane.

For this flight, the press sat facing Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, in the main seating area of the cabin, which featured white leather chairs and couches along with shiny wood that a Trump bodyguard anxiously warned the press not to scratch. Each seat was emblazoned with the Trump crest while television screens through the cabin showed flight data. Some reporters had to go to a separate private room for takeoff because they couldn’t sit on the floor for safety reasons. As the plane taxied, Trump got up and visited them, amiably making small talk. By the time the plane landed, Trump pivoted yet again on his immigration plan. Pence had helped one reporter find a missing cellphone that had gone flying across the cabin during takeoff.

The next stop was a county fair where Trump received a welcome more akin to the Beatles at Shea Stadium than a presidential candidate in Ohio. Even teenage boys shouted “I love you Donald” as the candidate struggled to walk a block past rows of corndog vendors. Instead of working the crowd, Trump simply had to wave as secret service agents protected him from the crush of humanity eager for a glimpse.

Throngs of Trump supporters try to get a photo of the Republican presidential candidate as he walks through the Canfield fair in Ohio. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

The following days for Trump were more conventional. On Tuesday, he held a town hall where in response to softball questions posed by General Mike Flynn, a longtime supporter, he demonstrated his nostalgia for the Iran-Iraq war. “I always say Iran and Iraq were very similar militarily. They’d fight, fight, fight and then they’d rest. They’d fight, fight, fight. And then Saddam Hussein would do the gas.” Trump followed this with a primetime rally where he railed against Hillary Clinton as an adoring crowd chanted “lock her up”.

On Wednesday, Trump held a policy speech in a wood-paneled club that has long catered to Philadelphia’s elites, where he suggested “sometimes it seems like there wasn’t a country in the Middle East Clinton didn’t want to invade” and railed against her legacy of “turmoil, suffering and death”. The policy Trump unveiled was a major and expensive expansion of the United States military to be funded through “commonsense reforms that eliminate government waste and budget gimmicks”.

Finally Trump made it to the USS Intrepid in New York, where he took questions from NBC’s Matt Lauer on live television for almost 30 minutes. Without a script or notes or guidance, Trump flailed on policy. He praised Putin repeatedly and stood by a tweet from 2013 opining sexual assault in the military was a consequence of allowing women to serve. But, through rhetorical jujitsu, he managed to avoid major damage and even repeated his lie that he had been against the Iraq war without being challenged.

From screaming crowds to foreign policy gaffes, these three days served as a condensed window into Trump’s unorthodox and unprecedented campaign. It’s unclear whether the blue-collar adoration the Republican nominee is receiving will compensate for his copious praise for Putin and cavalier dismissal of Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons. However, regardless of what happens, it will be as the sycophantic Trump aide said: “Amazing.”