Trump vs. Dem jack asses: Who is worse?

Congressional Democrats have started a multi-network TV series on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and a federal judge has said what so many others are saying. If successful in its purpose, the wild, furious, deadly and disgusting eruption to keep Joe Biden out of the White House on the basis of voting fraud could "permanently have ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining America democracy and the Constitution."

This is absurd. As much a horror as the riot was, there is no way the propagandized rioters could have enabled President Donald Trump to stay in office. Whatever his narcissistic villainy, he did not endanger the American future more than the iniquities of Democrats.

Vice President Mike Pence, chairman of the committee, who was in hiding, did call for police help and was intent on certifying the election as law required in the absence of state mistakes and despite harsh words from his boss. Even if torture had made him invalidate the votes, they would not have stayed invalidated for long. What the Democrats want right now, of course, is for Trump to go to prison and for their party to win the midterms along with the 2024 presidential election. They will never agree that hundreds of riots by Black Lives Matter probably helped inspire what happened at the Capitol.

While he does not have a feather to support him on the voter fraud theory, Trump does not appear technically guilty of riot incitement, and he did have reason to believe Democrats and their friends would resort to treachery to erase his presence. Early on, for example, the Mueller investigation aimed to get him evicted from office for conspiring with Russia in the commission of crimes.

Even after two years of putting people in prison for nothing to do with the allegation, the only evidence consisted of falsehoods from the Clinton campaign, aides talking to Russians like aides in other campaigns and Trump seeming to like Russian President Vladimir Putin. As for obstructing justice, Trump was fighting injustice.

No, another Capitol riot should never happen and punishment can be a deterrent. But the mostly partisan congressional impeachment effort after Jan. 6 was aimed not at a sitting president as required by the Constitution, but at a private citizen.

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Here was a bad joke evident to every literate person except politically indoctrinated legalese schemers. The illicit proceeding also required the supervision of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who told us by his actions that he saw the whole thing as a con. He refused to participate.

With no applause for troubling Trump, I worry too about the Democrats, their use of power, their disregard for the Constitution and their limited grasp of democracy in a republic.

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Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.