Former President Donald Trump has finally learned a key rule of politics: Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.

The presumptive Republican nominee has largely disappeared from the national stage in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, clearing way for Democrats’ anxieties to overwhelm the news cycle and ratchet up political pressure on his opponent.

Aside from a celebratory rally last Friday, Trump has largely gone silent — even canceling a planned television interview with a Virginia network, according to local outlet WVEC-TV/13News Now. After flirting with announcing his vice presidential pick in the days before the debate, his campaign reverted to its original plan to unveil the pick closer to the Republican convention.

Trump has been rewarded by an opponent in freefall, with polls showing the Republican candidate widening his lead over the president both nationally and in swing states while Democratic lawmakers openly declare that they don’t believe their party will retain control of the White House in November.

The former president and his advisers concede they don’t know how the episode will resolve itself, and that they’re not sure how Biden withdrawing from the ticket might impact the race’s dynamics. Vice President Kamala Harris, in particular, could offer voters a younger face and offset inroads Trump has made with women, independents and voters of color.

“I’m going to show up and I’m going to campaign whether it’s him or somebody else,” Trump said in an interview with Richmond, Virginia, radio station WRVA.

But Trump’s relative self-restraint has given Republican strategists hope that he’ll be able to avoid pitfalls of his own making through the campaign’s final four months.

“Trump can be a disciplined messenger when he wants to be,” Republican strategist Doug Heye said in an interview. “By staying out of the spotlight — not announcing a veep pick, for instance — he keeps the very negative spotlight on Biden.”

Democrats, by contrast, have desperately tried to bring Trump’s behavior back into the headlines — to no avail. Biden’s bid to focus attention on Trump’s conduct after the Supreme Court offered a broad interpretation of presidential immunity was quickly overwhelmed by his own political woes.

Aides at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters have said returning focus to Trump is essential as the president charts an increasingly narrow path back to competitiveness. On Wednesday, his team released a new ad arguing Trump “already led an insurrection and threatened to be a dictator.”

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