Former US lawmaker Liz Cheney said on Friday Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s violent comment suggesting she should face a firing squad for her foreign policy stance showed he could not be entrusted with the White House and would target his enemies in office.

Former President Trump, who faces Democratic US Vice-President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s election, called Cheney on Thursday “a very dumb individual” and a “war hawk”, noting that she and her father, former Republican Vice-President Dick Cheney, refused to back his third presidential run.

“She’s a radical war hawk. 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 to her face,” Trump told supporters at a campaign event with former Fox News television host Tucker Carlson in Arizona.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to investigate or prosecute his political rivals, including Cheney, as well as election workers, journalists and left-wing Americans, among others, and has said the military could be used against what he calls “radical left lunatics” if there is unrest on Election Day.

One of the most high-profile Republicans to turn against Trump, Cheney has endorsed Harris in the November 5 contest, saying she crossed party lines to put the country before politics and calling Trump a “danger”.

“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant,” Cheney responded in a post on X on Friday.

Once one of the party’s top leaders in the US House of Representatives, Cheney lost her seat in Congress after backing Trump’s second impeachment for his role in his supporters’ January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol.