Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain saw in each other a willingness to buck the Republican Party and became fast friends and political allies. Mindful of McCain’s legacy, the former California governor said on Wednesday that he couldn’t stay silent in the face of President Donald Trump’s recent spate of attacks on the late senator.

He told me that Trump’s swipes at McCain are both disgraceful and destructive. “He was just an unbelievable person,” Schwarzenegger said. “So an attack on him is absolutely unacceptable if he’s alive or dead—but even twice as unacceptable since he passed away a few months ago. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to do that. I just think it’s a shame that the president lets himself down to that kind of level. We will be lucky if everyone in Washington followed McCain’s example, because he represented courage.”

In a jab at the president’s 243-pound physique, the former world-champion bodybuilder said that Trump should turn his attention to infrastructure and immigration reform when he wakes up and starts his morning workout.

“I know he must be working out every day, because he’s so unbelievably in shape,” Schwarzenegger said.

Trump’s tirade began with a pair of weekend tweets laced with falsehoods. The first, on Saturday afternoon, scorned McCain for forwarding the now-famous Russia dossier to the FBI and casting the deciding vote that blocked Trump’s promised repeal of Obamacare:

Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier “is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain.” Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel. He had far worse “stains” than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!

His second tweet came early on Sunday morning:

So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) “last in his class” (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!

Why Trump had become so agitated seven months after McCain’s death was not entirely clear. One White House aide says that excoriating McCain isn’t a “winning issue,” and that officials would like to see Trump drop the subject. People close to the White House say that he might be feeling pressure from the Russia investigation, or that he was set off by something he saw on cable-TV news.