Donald Trump will host a rally in the Miami suburb of Doral on Tuesday night and break a relative – and uncharacteristic – silence over the turbulent aftermath of June’s presidential debate that raised questions about Joe Biden’s candidacy.
A Trump campaign source and some political opponents say the former president’s strategy has been to sit back and let Democrats tear into each other following Biden’s dismal debate performance, intensifying calls for him to drop out of November’s general election.
“We’re trying something new and shutting up,” an anonymous campaign insider told ABC News last week, a position effectively confirmed by Trump’s decision to largely avoid public appearances since a prearranged rally in Virginia the day after the 27 June debate – and to limit his posts on his Truth Social platform.
Though Trump did appear on Monday on Fox News to rail about immigrants and crime, despite the FBI reporting a major drop in violence in the first months of the year, the former Republican congressman Steve Stivers told the Hill: “When your opponent is blowing himself up, don’t interrupt. There’s no reason to insert yourself in that conversation.”
In Florida on Tuesday night, before a loyal crowd at the Doral golf club he owns, and in the first of two rallies he is staging this week, the presumptive Republican nominee is expected to revert to his usually voluble self – at least if messaging from inside his campaign is a guide.
Trump’s media office did not respond to a question from the Guardian seeking confirmation that the campaign was deliberately avoiding talking much about Biden’s shaky debate performance. But in a statement, Trump acolytes attacked the president’s “flailing candidacy” and urged him to stay in the race.
“Please keep doing these interviews,” said Jake Schneider, rapid response director for the Republican National Committee (RNC), referring to Biden calling into MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday and insisting “I am not going anywhere.”
Only in Biden’s mind, the statement said, “is his defiance helping his case as a steady drip of Democrats call for a change at the top of their ticket”.
Some senior Democrats also have thoughts on the former president’s silence, including David Axelrod, a senior adviser for the Obama White House, whose relationship with Biden has been fractious.
“Trump’s not talking much about Biden’s bad debate. Trump’s campaign is not blitzing ads about it. And Lara Trump [RNC co-chair and Trump’s daughter-in-law] said last week it would be an affront to democracy if Biden were not the nominee,” he wrote Monday on X.
“Why do you think they are uncharacteristically holding fire?”
It is also possible that Trump is more concerned about advancing his own campaign, notably whom to choose as his running mate one week before the Republican national convention in Milwaukee will confirm his third run at the White House as a Republican candidate.
Among those who will attend Tuesday’s rally is Marco Rubio, a senior Florida US senator, believed to be one of the leading contenders for Trump’s vice-presidential pick. A failed challenger to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, when Mike Pence emerged as Trump’s running mate, Rubio said on CNN on Sunday that he had “heard nothing”.
“Donald Trump has a decision to make. He’ll make it when he needs to make it. He’ll make a good decision,” he said.
Speculation has grown that the Doral event will provide Trump the perfect opportunity to unveil Rubio, particularly as Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, told Fox News on Monday that a decision was imminent.
Trump will also rally Saturday at Pittsburgh’s Butler Farm Show, close to Pennsylvania’s border with Ohio, where JD Vance – another understood to be on the shortlist – is a senator.
Vance, on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, also attempted to dampen expectations. “I have not gotten the call,” he said.
“Whoever his vice-president is, he’s got a lot of good people he could choose from, it’s the policies that worked and the leadership style that worked for the American people.”
Miller’s comments, meanwhile, hinted that Trump might also choose to wait to see if Biden drops out before declaring his hand.
“I look ahead as a campaign strategist to what does that vice-presidential debate look like,” he said, citing the hypothesis that Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice-president, would replace him at the top of the ticket.
“We don’t know if that’s going to be Kamala, or maybe they swap her out for someone who’s even more liberal, more extreme, although that might be tough to do.”
The Trump campaign’s announcement of the Doral rally, meanwhile, gave little indication of what he will talk about, other than how the Biden administration was “having catastrophic consequences on Floridians”, economically and in terms of immigration.
“Florida is a place near and dear to President Trump’s heart as his home state,” it said, referring to his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach.
Trump holds a solid 10-point advantage over Biden in Florida, according to fivethirtyeight.com’s average of polls.
