Bill Maher Defends Trump's Comment About Liz Cheney: 'Exactly What Hippies Always Said'

The "Real Time" host argued that the gun-filled fantasy the former president shared Thursday wasn't a threat, but an antiwar rallying cry that liberals used to share.

Bill Maher has been a critic of Donald Trump since the earliest days of his 2016 run for president.

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.’”