U.S. Sen. John Kennedy has really hit the big time now. One of the senator’s carefully curated — umm, Kennedyisms, for lack of a better word — got President Donald Trump’s attention last week, and made the presidential Twitter feed.

Is that what’s supposed to count as an accomplishment these days?

Kennedy’s frequent stabs at down-home wit range from the benign to the outrageous, and it’s not surprising that the one that Trump chose to recount was in the latter category. Under amply deserved fire for having called on four Democratic progressive congresswomen of color to go back to the countries they came from — never mind that three were born in the U.S. and the fourth, a Somali refugee, is a naturalized citizen — Trump recounted a Tuesday night rant by Kennedy to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

“The simple fact of the matter is, the four congresswomen think that America was wicked in its origins. They think that America and its people are even more wicked now, that we are all racist and misogynistic and evil,” Kennedy said. “They’re entitled to their opinion. They’re Americans. But I’m entitled to my opinion, and I just think they’re left-wing cracks, and they’re the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle. I think we should ignore them.”

Kennedy then went on to characterize his colleagues the “four horsewomen of the apocalypse,” which I’d call some pretty apocalyptic language if the good senator hadn’t gone ahead and done it for me.

I guess I should give Kennedy this. He did concede that U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley are entitled to their opinions and that they’re Americans — just like Kennedy and Trump, apparently, who complain about things they don’t like all the time without anyone telling them to love America or leave it. Nor does anyone say that to the legions of members of Congress who might struggle to wash their own hair, to borrow Kennedy’s characterization, including more than a few Republicans.

And ignoring them is exactly what the Republicans should be doing. But that’s never going earn Kennedy a presidential tweet, or in this case three.

Kennedy wasn’t the only Louisiana Republican to walk toward, not away, from the president’s latest outburst of ugliness. Both GOP candidates for governor quickly echoed his sentiments. U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham tweeted that "there’s no question that the members of Congress that (Trump) called out have absolutely said anti-American and anti-Semitic things” and that "I’ll pay for their tickets out of this country if they just tell me where they’d rather be." Eddie Rispone chimed in by calling the four representatives "America hating crazies” who “should crawl back under the rock they came from."

Grace Notes: Steve Scalise claims Republicans never dissed Obama. Let's go to the tape. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise is the dean of the Louisiana congressional delegation and its highest-ranking member in at least a generatio…

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise zeroed in on his colleagues’ alleged disrespect for Trump, including calls for his impeachment. He claimed that Republicans never treated President Barack Obama with disrespect, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, starting with Trump’s own baseless birther crusade questioning Obama’s very legitimacy.

Scalise, of course, has been willing to throw the “I” word around when it suits his own political purposes. That’s what he did last year when he broke from GOP leadership and said he’d consider supporting impeachment for Rod Rosenstein, the then-deputy attorney general, over a dispute involving the Mueller investigation. He dismissed concerns that such talk was out of bounds, calling the process a mere congressional “tool” rather than a remedy to be used only in the gravest of situations.

None of this is to say that anyone has to like the four women in question, or agree with their agenda, be it the removal of Trump for any number of possible reasons or for their policy priorities, which are to the left of the Democratic mainstream. And nobody has to believe that they’re geniuses, although those who dismiss their savvy — apparently including Kennedy — might wonder how two of them managed to beat long-serving incumbents from their own party.

The controversy isn’t about who they are, it’s about who Trump is.

And it’s very much about who the people tripping over themselves to give the president cover are.