MADISON, Wis. — Kamala Harris said Friday it was “disqualifying” for Donald Trump to say former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the former president’s most prominent Republican critics, should have rifles “shooting at her” to see how she feels about sending troops to fight.

The Democratic vice president has campaigned extensively with Cheney, especially in the “blue wall” battleground states that make up her strongest path to victory on Tuesday, while Trump has been going after the former Wyoming congresswoman and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, over the Iraq war and U.S. military interventions abroad.

Speaking to reporters after arriving in Madison, Wisconsin, Harris asked voters to consider who they’d prefer sitting in the Oval Office, driving the message she’s been emphasizing in the campaign’s closing week. Harris called Cheney “a true patriot” and said Trump “has increased his violent rhetoric.”

“His enemies list has grown longer. His rhetoric has grown more extreme,” Harris said. “And he is even less focused than before on the needs and the concerns and the challenges facing the American people.”

Trump and his allies say his comments are being misconstrued. They say he was arguing that Cheney is a “war hawk” but would be less supportive of using the military of she had to fight in wars herself.

He doubled down Friday, repeating the same imagery that drove the backlash.

“If you gave Liz Cheney a gun and put her into battle, facing the other side with the guns pointing at her, she wouldn’t have the courage and the strength or the stamina to even look the enemy in the eye,” Trump said during a rally in Warren, Michigan.

The Republican presidential candidate has been using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of “enemies from within” undermining the country. Some of his former senior aides and Harris have labeled him a fascist in response.

Cheney, who broke with Trump after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, on Friday called the former president a “cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

Trump has ramped up his critiques of the Cheneys in swing state Michigan, where he is competing with Harris for the votes of Arab Americans opposed to U.S. backing of Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and its subsequent invasion of Lebanon.

At an event late Thursday in Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked whether it was strange to see Cheney campaign against him. The former congresswoman has vocally opposed Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and endorsed Harris, joining the vice president at recent stops as they try to win over Republicans disaffected with Trump.

Trump called Cheney “a deranged person” and added: “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries.”

The former president continued: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the 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.

“You know they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh gee, well, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,” Trump said.

Cheney responded Friday in a post on X: “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.”

One prominent Trump critic, former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, argued the former president’s comment had been taken out of context and that Trump was “NOT calling for Liz Cheney to be executed in front of a firing line.”

“In Trump’s typically stupid, ugly fashion, he’s trying to make a point about Cheney’s stance on war,” Walsh said on X.