WASHINGTON, Aug  3, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Kamala Harris's campaign branded
Donald Trump "scared" Saturday after he proposed to change the presidential
debate schedule ahead of a rally in Georgia where he will try to halt the vice
president's surging momentum in her bid to become America's first woman
president.

In an overnight post on his Truth Social app, Trump said he was willing to
debate Harris on the conservative Fox News network on September 4, while
declining to participate in a previously scheduled debate on ABC.

Trump pitched the idea before going to a rally in Atlanta, where he will
gather supporters in the same arena where Harris addressed an excited crowd of
some 10,000 just this Tuesday.

Trump said he had "agreed" to the debate plan with Fox. And he said it
would take place in Pennsylvania -- a crucial swing state in the US
presidential electoral system -- in front of a live audience.

 The Harris campaign dismissed this as "games."
"Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he
already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out," Harris's
campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement. "He needs
to... show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept 10."

The proposal to confront Harris on a network that has long supported him
was the latest Trump effort to recapture the initiative in a campaign that had
been entirely focused on a rematch against 81-year-old Joe Biden, until he
dramatically dropped his reelection bid on July 21.

 Since then, Harris, 59, has reenergized the Democratic base almost
overnight.

She has raked in donations, reassembled the team behind Barack Obama's two
historic election victories, and neutralized the solid lead that 78-year-old
Trump had built against Biden in opinion polls.
       On Friday, she secured the official Democratic nomination, backed by near
unanimous party support.

 Harris is due imminently to announce her vice presidential pick, with the
popular governor of key state Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, a frontrunner. On
Tuesday, she is set to launch a countrywide tour with her yet-to-be-named
running mate.
       
- Rally in battleground state -
       
Late Saturday, Trump will be joined by his own vice presidential pick,
Senator J.D. Vance, at the rally in Georgia -- another battleground state that
will help decide who wins the Electoral College majority on November 5.

Trump lost narrowly to Biden there in 2020 and the state was at the center
of his unprecedented attempts to overturn the results of the election and
refusal to accept defeat.

The size of Harris's rally on Tuesday was a warning sign to the Trump
campaign, which has long touted its ability to draw thousands of passionate
supporters, in contrast to Biden's usually meager crowds.

       
The situation is a remarkable turnaround in a campaign where Trump had been
appearing to gather force while Biden -- hurt by a disastrous debate
performance in June and mounting voter concerns over his mental acuity -- was
steadily slipping.

Harris's rapid entry has left the Trump campaign scrambling -- and Trump
now the oldest presidential nominee in US history.

Adding to the changed dynamics, Harris is vying to become the first woman
president and the first of Black and Indian biracial heritage.

Trump drew gasps at a convention of Black journalists this week when he
claimed that Harris, who has identified closely with her Black roots all her
life, was only pretending.

 "She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian
heritage. I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she
happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black," he said.