When I reached Jean-Claude Ambroise, the new chairman of the City of Groton Democratic Committee, by telephone Monday to ask about his enthusiastic support of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, he denied it.

When I then told him I had screen shots from his Facebook page at the time, posts in which he celebrates candidate Trump as a "winner" and trashes "Crooked Hillary Clinton," he said he didn't want me to read them to him.

"I'm not playing that game with you. Have at it," he said.

The conversation deteriorated from there. But Ambroise, a former moderator of the Groton Representative Town Meeting, insisted he has been a lifelong Democrat.

"As a Black voter, I fully support the Democratic Party," he said.

In 2016, though, not so much, according to a collection of the screen shots from his Facebook page shared with me.

I will give Groton City Democrats the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know, when they elected Ambroise their chairman last week, that he was an enthusiastic Trumpist who was publicly lambasting Democrats supporting their party's presidential candidate in 2016.

After all, he denied it to me, before I offered to read him the screen shots.

But someone from the committee ought to go tap Ambroise on the shoulder and tell him he needs to resign. He is an embarrassment not only to Groton Democrats but to the entire Connecticut party.

Maybe some Democrats could find their way to excuse a party chairman who once crossed the line in an important presidential election. It is, after all, a private vote.

But the fact that Ambroise was spewing such venom toward Democrats in a public forum is way beyond excusable.

"This will be my final election transmission. Today I will do my one job as a freedom loving American. Will you do yours?" Ambroise wrote on Election Day in 2016.

"Vote for Trump/Pence 2016 in opposition to the overly corrupted and incestuous political, financial, corporate, global elitists who dont give a flying fig about you or I."

Those corrupt, incestuous elitists Ambroise attacks would be Democrats.

There's lots more.

The new City of Groton Democratic chairman, for instance, talked on Facebook about Crooked Hillary as a swindler who was "shaking in her pantsuit" at the idea Trump would win. Ambroise accused Clinton of using Secret Service agents of confiscating unflattering video footage of her.

He reposted pro-Trump stories from conservative media like Breitbart and reposted a comment from Sean Hannity criticizing the pope for his criticism of Trump's promise to build a wall, noting that walls surround the Vatican.

Ambroise, in an angry tirade that eventually concluded our call, noted that there are other prominent Democrats in Groton who used to be Republicans. He has always been a Democrat, he insisted.

That is certainly true, that prominent Democrats used to be Republicans.

But most of the Republicans I know who left their party in the era of Donald Trump have been fleeing Trumpism and certainly not embracing it, as Groton's new chairman did so enthusiastically in 2016.

Is this really who City of Groton Democrats want to lead their party?

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com