So what are Donald Trump's latest offences?

Well, on national TV on Wednesday evening, he bagged the entire US military top brass and hinted that, as president, he'd purge the Pentagon.

He twice denigrated US President Barack Obama, claiming that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin "was far more" a leader. And when it was suggested that Putin was very much an angry autocrat, Trump dug in: "Do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?"

The Putin-Trump bromance, with much of the fawning seemingly rooted in what an army of lay psychologists diagnose as Trump's insatiable need for positive reinforcement, has now reached a seriously weird level.

Not so much an alliance between potential global partners, the pivot here seems to be a remarkable belief on Trump's part that Putin "likes me" – and so, in his eyes, Putin can do no wrong.

"If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him," Trump told NBC moderator Matt Lauer, as though he was sharing a profound understanding of grave matters.

Trump went from Wednesday's NBC forum to an interview with a Kremlin mouthpiece, TV network Russia Today, arguing "it's probably unlikely" that Russia was responsible for the hacking earlier this year of the computers of the Democratic National Committee – and despite the reported belief of various US intelligence agencies that indeed the Russians are complicit, Trump argued that it was the Democrats who "are putting that out".

And for good measure Trump slammed the US news media, telling Russia Today: "The media has been unbelievably dishonest – I mean, they'll take a statement that you make which is perfect and they'll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it or do something with it."

It didn't seem to have occurred to Trump that what he was describing is how he speaks.

Trump has expressed admiration for Putin's authoritarian control of Russia and on Wednesday, he seemed to want to give Putin a leg up in dealing with the Baltic states – former Soviet republics that are now aligned with NATO – by saying again that he's not in a hurry to defend them.

More troubling is the overlap between the less savoury aspects of Trump and Putin.

Putin biographer Steven Lee Myers writes: "Russia's critics – and certainly the White House – would dispute Putin's accomplishments, noting the corrupted, kleptocratic economy and a stunted political system that has marginalised genuine opposition, at times violently. There is also the 2014 annexation of Crimea, which, while popular in Russia, has led to international sanctions and diplomatic isolation that has eroded Russia's economy and reputation."

"And your point is?" would be the likely response from Trump. He incites violence at his rallies, he threatens people who speak against him and warns of a crackdown on the media in the event that he is elected; accounts of his corrupt business deals are ample; and his demands for the US to steal Iraq's oil reserves are up there with Putin snatching Crimea from Ukraine.

Usually loquacious Democrats were speechless, with some recovering sufficiently to observe that had a Democratic candidate spoken of a Republican president as Trump had of Obama, they'd be run out of Washington.

Oddly and yet again, it was Trump's Republican colleagues who felt obliged to pull him into line.

House Speaker Paul Ryan – accusing the Russian president of "conducting state-sponsored cyber attacks on our political system",  described Vladimir Putin as "an aggressor who does not share our interests".

Florida senator and failed contender for the GOP nomination Marco Rubio added: "[Putin] is a thug … He's a dangerous and bad guy."

South Carolina senator and unabashed Trump critic Lindsey Graham was withering: "Other than destroying every instrument of democracy in his country, having opposition people killed, dismembering neighbours through military force, and being the benefactor of the butcher of Damascus, [Putin's] a good guy."

Hillary Clinton couldn't believe her luck. She was not at her best in the NBC forum on Wednesday and if Trump had not gone down the Putin path, the Democratic candidate might have been under a bit of media pressure on Thursday.

Instead she was leading the charge against what many rate as Trump's un-American conduct: "Not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as our commander-in-chief, it's scary. It suggests he'll let Putin do whatever he wants to do – and then make excuses for him."

Obama too could not resist an opportunity to put the boot in.

Calling Trump's behaviour "unacceptable and outrageous", he told reporters in Laos: "I don't think the guy is qualified to be president of the US – there's this process that seems to take place over the course of the election season, where somehow behaviour that in normal times we consider completely unacceptable and outrageous becomes normalised."

A seriously goofy moment in the Wednesday TV forum was Trump's claim that he could tell by the body language of the intelligence officers who gave him his first national security briefing that they did not approve of Obama's conduct of national security.

"I'm pretty good with the body language, I could tell they were not happy," Trump claimed.

Put to one side the fact that the briefings do not constitute policy advice to the president. As luck would have it, NBC News has an account of some of the goings-on in the Trump briefing – and it seems that much of the readable body language came from members of Trump's entourage.

Apparently Trump's security adviser, retired general Mike Flynn, repeatedly interrupted the briefing, demanding answers to what were described as his "pointed" questions – so much so that another Trump adviser, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, felt a need to grab Flynn by the arm, telling him to "shut up".

The most unbelievable development of all – Donald Trump is in the room and someone else has to be told to button it.