When ABC announced it was indefinitely suspending the late-night Jimmy Kimmel show under severe pressure from the Trump administration, I recalled Vladimir Putin’s deep hostility to Russia’s beloved satirical puppet show Kukly (known in English as Puppets), which lampooned him as an evil gnome.

A year into his presidency, Putin managed to get the show off the air — proving how threatening political humor is to the egos of authoritarian rulers and their wannabe imitators like Donald Trump.

The suspension of Kimmel was ostensibly about his remarks after the death of Charlie Kirk. But in reality, it reflected Trump’s hostility to any media criticism — even that of comics. The president’s gleeful reaction to Kimmel’s downfall was to call for the cancellation of two NBC late-night shows, with Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, both of whom criticize him.

Any laughs at the president’s expense are apparently as unacceptable as Kukly’s political satire was to Putin.

Trump is following a pattern clearly marked out by the Kremlin — and perhaps even more relevantly by Turkey, where journalists and academics are prosecuted for “insulting the president” — and by Hungary, led by Trump pal Viktor Orbán.

To see where Trump is headed, it’s useful to know how those autocrats muzzled their formerly free press.

I can still recall how all my Russian friends were glued to Kukly every Saturday night on the then-independently owned NTV station. It was early 2000, when President Boris Yeltsin had resigned and greenlit the appointment of Putin. Russia’s media sphere had become relatively open under Yeltsin, who had grudgingly tolerated the puppet show’s depiction of him as an aging and often drunk buffoon.

But Putin was furious that NTV criticized him and the Second Chechen War he had started during the run-up to the 2000 elections. And he was livid that Kukly’s Putin puppet was a foul-mouthed dwarf, falsely made to look presentable by the super rich oligarch who created him.

In 2000, when I interviewed Vladislav Surkov, who was the key architect of Putin’s seizure of all political power, he detailed how the Russian leader intended to take control of all Russian media, especially the NTV network. As we sat in his Kremlin office, I asked whether Russia would have room for any independent media.

“If we need independent media, we will create it,” he retorted.

NTV refused Putin’s demands to shutter Kukly until the Kremlin finally had a state-controlled company take over the network in 2021. The demise of Kukly marked the beginning of Putin’s full-bore crackdown on all Russian media and TV networks — which were taken over by his cronies or simply shut down.

Of course, Russia is a special case where Putin’s powers are now unlimited. Under his rule, dozens of journalists have been murdered and hundreds forced into exile. Russian courts will jail any independent media voices as “foreign agents” at the Kremlin’s command.

Yet, it is shocking how swiftly the White House\ and the president’s far-right supporters have followed in the footsteps of Trump-friendly autocrats in shrinking the space for journalism that doesn’t toe the line.

As the New York Times’ CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said recently — after Trump’s frivolous $15 billion lawsuit against the newspaper for purveying “falsehoods” against the president — “there is an anti-press playbook at this point. If you look at countries like Turkey and Hungary and India, those countries have elections, but they also really work to quash opposition to the regime.”

The first commandment of Turkey and Hungary’s anti-press agenda is for the government to exert financial pressure on critical media outlets, using state agencies, new laws, and drawn-out court cases. Sound familiar?

In Turkey, the government imposed huge fines and financial penalties on media conglomerates known for independent reporting until their finances were severely weakened. Then, pro-government media organizations bought them up.

Similarly, in Hungary, Orbán discouraged advertisers from supporting independent media and steered government ad revenue — still critical in that country — to pro-government outlets. Orbán cronies then systematically bought up cash-strapped independent outlets and converted them to government mouthpieces.

You can see a similar program of economic pressure by the White House, which has sued the New York Times for an amount that vastly exceeds its market value. (The Washington Post is home free because Trumper Jeff Bezos has already reigned in its editorial independence).

Trump has even brought a frivolous $10 billion defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal for its article on the vulgar birthday card he allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein. Could this be connected with the fact that the Journal’s conservative editorial page has turned against Trump?

The president’s attorneys have also won millions in suit settlements against ABC and CBS, which were ready to pay, although the cases seemed puny, rather than have Trump drag them out.

There is no subtlety about this message. This is a warning. We can and will hurt you financially if you don’t curb your criticism, and we will use government agencies to do it.

As the Federal Communications Commission’s chairman, Brendan Carr, said bluntly on a right-wing podcast about ABC’s choice in pulling Kimmel’s show: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

In the move to control TV networks, the administration has made it absolutely clear it will help Trump-friendly billionaires carry out media mergers, consolidate control over media platforms by means contrary to FCC rules, gain control of TikTok, and so on, so long as they broadcast his “truth.”

What is most frightening is that Trump has taken only the first steps in the anti-press playbook. Following the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Orbán rule books, we can expect them to try to resurrect old laws or pass new anti-press laws.

In Turkey, the government uses vague anti-terror laws and defamation claims to bring criminal charges against journalists. In Hungary, it accuses them of violating the country’s sovereignty.

What law could Trump misuse to target independent journalists and media outlets? In his first term, the president made clear he wanted to make it easier to sue critics for libel.

My guess is that he dreams of overturning New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, in which the U.S. Supreme Court raised the burden of proof for public officials suing for defamation. Trump wants to make it easy for him to sue.

But before he undertakes that lift, he has plenty more to imitate from the Turkish and Hungarian — and Russian — models, including more threats and incitement against independent outlets.

In Russia, Putin began the process by denouncing political satire. As he made clear, politicians whose egos are so weak that they can’t take a joke are likely unable to suffer any criticism at all.

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