WASHINGTON Former President Barack Obama has a simple rule about engaging politically in the age of Donald Trump : Ignore the noise, respect the space, but dont let the direct mischaracterizations go unanswered.

Over the weekend, President 44 weighed in for the second time on his successors tenure, in this instance refuting the charge, leveled in the most Trumpian of fashions a pre-7 a.m. tweet that he had wiretapped Trump Tower prior to the election.

As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen, Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, said in a statement. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.

Though Obama has long touted the virtues of former presidents remaining on the sidelines as current presidencies unfold, aides and associates said there wasnt much hesitation about issuing the statement. As one adviser said, there will be pushback when Trump is hitting at the integrity of the office of the presidency.

But those aides and associates also recognize that battles with Trump must be strategically chosen, because excessive engagement carries a price. Its not just about extending the courtesy of distance that President George W. Bush and much of his team showed back in 2009. Obama also is wary of suffocating the next generation of Democratic leaders by remaining personally involved.

In his mind, it is more about being strategic in the sense that it is hard to see how it is in anyones interests for him to become the face of the resistance or to be narrating the Trump presidency, said a source close to the former president. He knows he sucks up all the oxygen when he speaks. The lights are on us and the extent we take up the oxygen it affects the next generation of leaders rising.

From his preferred distance, however, Obama remains engaged. Though his public appearances suggest a former president blissfully enjoying his time away from politics kite surfing with Richard Branson or taking in a Broadway play aides said he has followed the developments of the Trump presidency closely, reading newspapers and occasionally watching news on TV.

Print more than broadcast, said the source close to Obama. He is not an avid Twitter user like his successor. But he is aware when a Trump flourish blossoms into a full-blown controversy on the social media platform, the source said. He occasionally follows, but never directs, the pushback that his former top staffers offer on Twitter.

Obamas also dispatched his team more than a dozen strong, working out of an office in the West End neighborhood of Washington to keep tabs on the unreported stories. There is a regular conference call for the Obama network, a meeting the ex-president attended with former aides a few weeks back, and ad hoc calls to Senate and House Democrats, state-based groups and grassroots organizations.