HBO host Bill Maher criticized media outlets for claiming former President Donald Trump suggested putting former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming in front of a “firing squad.”

Trump accused Cheney of always seeking “to go to war” during a Thursday forum hosted by Daily Caller cofounder Tucker Carlson, suggesting she would pursue a less aggressive foreign policy if she’d had guns “trained on her” at some point in her life. Maher said media outlets that claimed Trump wanted Cheney executed were not being truthful.

“I woke up today to the headline that Trump had called for a firing squad for Liz Cheney, and this is what I really don’t like about the media,” Maher said in a panel discussion on “Overtime,” a webcast that streams after “Real Time with Bill Maher” airs on HBO. “No, he didn’t … you don’t have to move me to not like Donald Trump.”

“He says so many sh***y things, why do you have to do that?” podcaster Michael Moynihan responded.

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The Washington Post and CNN ran articles suggesting Trump was hoping Cheney met a violent end.

“Just to be clear, this is exactly what hippies always said. This is exactly what peaceniks always said,” Maher 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.”

“I don’t like Donald Trump,” Maher added. “Don’t lie to me and tell me he wants her in front of a firing squad. He was saying something that, by the way, if it came out of the mouth, some of it, not the stupid part, again, sounds like what hippies used to say.”

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland admitted the coverage was “ridiculous and absurd,” but asked when Trump “criticized a war hawk the way a hippie did.”

“It’s counterproductive,” Moynihan said. “I mean the number of Trump people you talk to who talk about the media and giving them any ammunition like this. I mean, I saw headlines, chyron on television this morning saying that Donald Trump had said that [Liz Cheney] should be executed. I mean, at the beginning of that kind of rambling, incoherent thing, he said give her a weapon, which is not typically something you do to someone you’re going to execute.”

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