Last night, Oliver Stone was interviewed by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Stone’s new Vladimir Putin Showtime series where he spent 20 hours interviewing one of the most reviled figures in geopolitics. Colbert begins with a clip from Stone’s interview where he seems ecstatic to merely be in Putin’s presence after offering up a giant softball question.

Stone praises Putin for managing to stay on the world stage for 16 years and his work ethic — pretty standard pro-Putin legacy doled out by the Kremlin every day. It is naked propaganda there is no other way to describe what Stone is doing in this interview and something Stone visibly becomes frustrated with trying to explain and justify. At the 4:10 mark, Stone delivers the Russians’ message for them: “He really wanted–wants, still–still wants a partnership” with the US.

At the 4:50 mark, Stone talks about how Putin has been abused, to which the crowd groans and Stone amends his statement adding, “In the media.” Of course, that just makes the crowd laugh and jeer even louder. That’s what aired, but not all that happened.

Page Six reported

“Why don’t you ask me about that?” — but we’re told that the host shot back, “I’ll ask you about that when you make a documentary about Israel!”

(The source described Stone’s Israeli argument as “a classic anti-Semitic canard.”)

It will be interesting if that footage is released and hits social media.