Donald Trump has suggested Snoop Dogg should be arrested for pretending to shoot him in a music video.

"Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!" the President wrote on Twitter.

The artist had been criticised for shooting a toy gun at a character resembling Mr Trump in the video, and the gun releases a flag with the word "bang" on it.

The President's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, told TMZ he was "shocked" by the video.

"It’s totally disgraceful. Snoop owes the president an apology," Mr Cohen said.

"There’s absolutely nothing funny about an assassination attempt on a president, and I’m really shocked at him, because I thought he was better than that."

Florida senator Marco Rubio previously said: "If the wrong person sees that and gets the wrong idea, you could have a real problem. Snoop shouldn't have done that.

"We've had presidents assassinated before... so anything like that is something people should be really careful about."

The video also features Kaytranada and is a remix of Lavender by Canadian group BadBadNotGood.

Snoop Dogg told Billboard he was not looking for a reaction with the video.

"I just put it out because I feel like it’s something that’s missing," he said.

"Any time I drop something, I’m trying to fill in a void. I feel like it’s a lot of people making cool records, having fun, partying, but nobody’s dealing with the real issue with this f***ing clown as President, and the sh*t that we dealing with out here, so I wanted to take time out to push pause on a party record and make one of these records for the time being."

The President's argument against the artist is similar to that made in a video by conspiracy theorist platform Infowars, a website with which he has long-running links.

It is not known if the President watched the video. The founder of Infowars, Alex Jones, claimed last month that the President still calls him for advice.