What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to start a fight in the Democratic party, and got condemned by Republicans.

Trump was up bright and early with a tweet thread that, even by his standards, was overtly "xenophobic, even racist"—and that's coming from one of his most reliable supporters. 

In it, he said that four freshman Democratic congresswomen who "came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe" to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

Three of the four members of Congress Trump was talking about were born in the United States. The fourth, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), came to the United States as a child refugee from the civil war in Somalia.

Trump's real intent, on a day where golf was the only other thing on his schedule, appears to have been to try to drive a wedge between those members and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House. Both his original tweets and a follow-up thread mentioned Pelosi. He falsely claimed, not for the first time, that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had called Pelosi a "RACIST!" 

As a political maneuver, it doesn't seem to have worked. As of Sunday evening, no national Republican had stepped forward to defend him, and those that did comment called his display "racist and disgusting," pointedly reminded Trump that "we're all Americans," and said that "it has to stop."

Democrats, predictably, found common ground in turning Trump's racist words back on him. Pelosi, the four congresswomen Trump attacked, and Democrats in general were all on the same page in their responses.

Why should I care about this?

• Even by Trump's standards, this is racist.

• Defining your political opponents as foreigners is what authoritarians do.