Florida’s outgoing governor Ron DeSantis has been fiercely criticizing Republicans since the GOP’s shellacking in the midterm elections, raising questions about whether the offensive is the opening gambit of another run for president. DeSantis’ political future seemed uncertain in recent months, but he has returned to the national spotlight this week with a series of unusually blunt attacks aimed at his fellow Republicans after Democrats swept the midterms on Tuesday, recapturing control of both the House and Senate. It comes as the midterm results have sparked a reckoning within the GOP, indicating that the era of Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) may be nearing an end and scrambling the race for Trump's successor.
In recent days, DeSantis has spoken out in interviews and at a press conference, calling the results close to an "extinction-level event" for the GOP and a "rebuke" of President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. At the same time, he has argued that Republicans should look to his state as a model for governance, saying Florida has shown how Republicans can win in a tough political environment and "was able to hold the line" while other red states were unable to fend off the blue wave. Republican nominees for governor and Senate in the Sunshine State did win their races, though by far tighter margins than two years ago.
DeSantis’ recent moves have fueled speculation that he is positioning himself for another run for the White House, after losing the 2024 Republican nomination to Trump. The governor, who is term-limited and set to leave office in January, has not ruled that out. We’ll see.” Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political Science at Northeastern University, said DeSantis’ recent rhetoric “is consistent with planting a seed for a presidential run, while distancing himself from both Trump and congressional Republicans." Like other 2028 hopefuls, he is “poking around with messaging already,” added Grant Davis Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University.
Newsweek has contacted DeSantis’ office for comment via email. DeSantis began his scathing critique of the second Trump administration before Election Day. In a lengthy interview released on the eve of the election, he called Trump’s war with Iran a “big, big drag” on Republicans and accused Republicans of gaslighting voters about rising gas prices.
It hurts people, working class people, and it's higher because of this conflict,” he said on Stephen A. Smith’s podcast, Straight Shooter. If you can't admit that to voters, then you're gaslighting them, and they're not going to listen to you on other things." At a press conference in Tallahassee on Wednesday, he said the election results were close to an "extinction-level event" for Republicans.
But he took a victory lap at how Republicans had performed in his state, while Republican candidates fell to Democratic challengers across the map, even in the previously reliably red states of Texas, Kansas, Iowa and South Carolina. During that press conference, he also said that Republicans were hurt by the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and took aim at lawmakers for failing to ban congressional stock trading. And in an interview on Fox News later on Wednesday, he again pointed the finger at Trump and congressional Republicans.
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