The targeting of comedy shows reveals something crucial about how authoritarian leaders operate: they’re thin-skinned bullies who can’t tolerate being laughed at. Satirical criticism poses a unique threat because humor can rapidly deflate their carefully constructed mythology of big power and harsh invincibility, in ways that earnest news reporting often cannot unmask.

Everyone looking at Trump now is talking about Vladimir Putin’s pattern of attacks on comedy. The Russian show “Kukly” became one of his earliest media targets, featuring puppet versions of Russian politicians that mocked Putin as an “evil, muttering baby gnome.”

Putin assumed the presidency in March 2000, and within weeks began pressuring NTV to censor the comedy as condition to continue being licensed. The Kremlin made it clear that removing the Putin puppet was “a necessary condition for reconciliation between NTV and the Russian authorities.”

NTV wasn’t compliant enough for the baby gnome so he had that show cancelled by 2002, following raids on NTV’s parent company and the purge of much of the station’s editorial staff.