But on Friday, the liberal pundit defended the GOP presidential nominee for imagining how former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) would react to having guns trained at her, and argued on his show, HBO’s “Real Time,” that Trump’s remark expressed the same antiwar notion that liberals used to share.
At a campaign event with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, on Thursday, the former president called Cheney a “war hawk.” Both Cheney and her father, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, have endorsed his opponent, Kamala Harris.
“Let’s put her with a rifle, standing there, with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said.
He went on: “You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, ‘Aw, gee, well, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’”
Maher argued the former president’s fantasy about Cheney getting shot at was just a poorly worded argument for non-interventionist foreign policy.
“I woke up today to the headline that Trump had called for a firing squad for Liz Cheney,” he said Friday. “And this is what I really don’t like about the media — no, he didn’t. You don’t have to move me to not like Donald Trump more than I already do.”
“Just to be clear, this is exactly what hippies always said,” the host added. “This is exactly what peaceniks always said. This is ‘Fortunate Son,’ the song. It’s like, you know what? It’s very easy to sit in your building and send young men to die.”
Maher received some pushback from one guest on his show, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who acerbically countered that Trump must know “what it’s really like from Vietnam” — in reference to the fact that Trump’s “bone spur” diagnosis helped him avoid being drafted into the military.
Maher conceded that Trump “expresses himself horribly,” and Raskin argued that there has “been a lot of violence” following Trump’s political rise — which shouldn’t be ignored.
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The MAGA leader has reportedly made more than 100 threats to his perceived enemies, and has begun repeating that there is “an enemy within” the U.S. government that he hopes to eradicate. He has even pondered using the military to quell potential civil unrest from the “radical left.”
Trump’s Cheney comment sparked outrage among high-ranking Democrats, including Harris, who argued such remarks are “disqualifying,” as well as Cheney herself, who said this is “how dictators destroy free nations.”
Maher, who has long warned about the dangers of a second Trump term and predicted that he wouldn’t promptly concede the 2020 presidential election, ultimately found himself in a predicament Friday — by defending the same billionaire who once sued him.
“Just don’t lie to me,” Maher said Friday about the media. “I don’t like Donald Trump. Don’t lie to me and tell me he wants her in front of a firing squad. He was saying something that … sounds like what hippies used to say — about not sending people to die.”
