New York magazine podcaster Kara Swisher has hit out at Donald Trump for failing to agree to another debate with his opponent Kamala Harris.

She said Trump’s reluctance to appear is because he is scared of having a bad debate like the one he criticized President Joe Biden for.

“This last week there’s been several appearances where his cognitive challenges are clear and so when he’s pushed in any way or when that debate happened with Kamala Harris, he has issues,” she said.

Swisher, who was appearing on CNN's The Chris Wallace Show on Saturday, suggested that the former president had learnt some of the lessons seen during the last few months—to the detriment of the American electorate.

“We talked about it with Biden. It’s so clear from so many of the speeches this week that he loses words, he mixes up people, he doesn’t want that contrast because she doesn’t do that. So he’s not going to appear near her.”

Another panelist, Reihan Salam, who is the president of the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, said there were other reasons why Trump had declined invitations to another debate and an interview on 60 Minutes.

“Respectfully, if you think about 60 Minutes’ track record of covering Donald Trump, I think he has reason to believe that is not necessarily going to be a venue that will be entirely fair and reasonable, just as Harris has objections to appearing on Fox,” he said.

The conversation was prompted by Chris Wallace’s provocative question of why Trump was “ducking” a debate as well as an interview on 60 Minutes.

Trump has previously claimed that Harris only wants a debate because she felt she was in a losing position.

He recently posted on Truth Social: “I beat Biden, I then beat her, and I’m not looking to do it again, too far down the line. Votes are already cast — And I’m leading BIG in the Polls. I’ll MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, she’s incapable of it!”