Hollywood director Oliver Stone, who recently emerged as a prominent celebrity defender of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has a son who works for a Russian government-funded propaganda outlet.
Stone is the director of the upcoming Showtime series "The Putin Interviews," compromised of a series of interviews Stone conducted with Putin over a span of two years. The show has already been criticized for taking Putin's assertions at face value and excusing Russian aggression.
Most recently Stone was panned for defending Putin during an interview with CBS' "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
"That doesn't seem like an interview," Colbert told him. "That seems like an opportunity for him to merely propagandize."
Stone responded that Putin has been "insulted and abused" and "never really said anything bad about anybody."
Despite Stone's claim that he treated Putin fairly, his son Sean Stone is a host on the Russian-backed television network RT America, part of RT News, which observers have called the Kremlin's propaganda outlet.
Sean Stone was hired in 2015 to replace an RT journalist who resigned in protest after bucking the network line and criticizing the Russian invasion of Crimea. Like his father—who has defended Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro, among others—Stone has a history of defending anti-American authoritarian leaders.
The younger Stone made headlines in 2012 for defending then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "really misunderstood." Stone, who converted to Shia Islam during a trip to Iran, told Bill O'Reilly he was "OK with Iran having a nuclear weapon" and insisted the country is a moderate republic.