The New York Times will stop at nothing to paint President Trump and fellow Republicans as racist, even Nazi-level threats, while ignoring Democratic political trolling and the violence that took place under the anti-racism rubric during recent racial protest marches. Foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen, writing from Paris, hysterically compared the Trump era to the Nazi era in his Saturday column, “The Most Dangerous Phase of Trump’s Rule.” ....the overarching threat the United States faces in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election is from Trump. The fascism in the air is on the far right of the political spectrum. If Trump could identify national humiliation as his ace in the hole in 2016, he can also seize the potential of the coronavirus pandemic to muddy the waters and stir pervasive fear. .... Trump is preparing the ground to contest any loss to Joe Biden and remain president, aided, no doubt, by Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department. I know, it’s unthinkable. So was the Reichstag fire.... Giovanni Russonello took the race angle in his report in Friday's paper: Most Americans continue to support the nationwide protests against racial injustice, but with President Trump issuing an ever-more-combative barrage of attacks, new polling shows that some Republicans have grown wary of demonstrators’ demands and retreated toward saying that racism is not in fact a big problem in the United States. Russonello tried to shield Democrats from a political weakness: The “Defund the Police” slogan shouted by radical BLM protesters. But [Republican pollster Glen] Bolger said Democrats had shown a surprising ability to avoid being painted as extreme on one particular issue: calls to “defund the police.” There was some predictable “seizing” going on by Republicans. Mr. Trump and other Republicans have seized on this phrase, believing that most voters will find it alienating and extreme.... Over the past seven days, the campaign has spent $3.1 million on an ad that shows an answering service in the future responding to a 911 call, with scenes from eruptive protests taking over the split screen. The ad appears to illustrate a dystopian nightmare, resembling imagery from Fox News more than from the Biden campaign platform. But the Monmouth poll’s results, along with similar data from other surveys, don’t bode well for this messaging. An overwhelming share of Americans told Monmouth’s interviewers that when they heard protesters say “defund the police,” they understood it as a demand to change the way police departments operate, not as a push to eliminate the police altogether. Seventy-seven percent of all Monmouth respondents -- including three-quarters of white Americans and two-thirds of Republicans -- said this, while less than one in five said they thought “defund the police” meant getting rid of police departments. Russonello seemed relieved the public wasn’t taking the left wing at its word. Also on Friday, Michael Gold and Daniel Slotnik reported admiringly on New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio’s childish street painting stunt (“Black Lives Matter” in big yellow letters next to Trump Tower) undertaken alongside racial bomb-thrower Al Sharpton: “Using Broad Strokes, De Blasio Has Words For an Old Adversary.” The news story read like a Nation magazine editorial: “Mr. Trump, who has a history of denigrating Black people, appeared to take the bait.” (Capitalization in original.)