Desantis Calls Midterm Bloodbath An ‘extinction-level Event For Republicans’

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis eviscerated the state of Republican politics Wednesday after the party’s devastating midterm losses, blaming everything from the Epstein files to members of Congress trading stocks.

The GOP governor maintained the Democratic wins in his state and beyond were more about voters rejecting Republicans in Washington than supporting liberal policies. And while the elections were “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans,” DeSantis took a proud victory lap on how the GOP performed in his state, where they swept state Cabinet races and staved off defeats like those suffered in conservative strongholds like Iowa, Kansas and Texas.

“To call it a wave, I don't think would be fully accurate,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Tallahassee. “It’s the political equivalent of a meteor strike that went all around the United States, blue states, red states, everything in between. And the one state that was able to hold the line and withstand that is right here in the free state of Florida.”

DeSantis, who is term-limited and set to leave office in January, slammed how Republicans attacked this election cycle by focusing heavily on transgender issues instead of other policies, like responding to the booming growth of artificial intelligence. He contended Democrats outflanked the GOP on regulating AI and big tech, winning rural voters by pushing to slow down data center development on their turf.

Although DeSantis led the charge in passing legislation to ban transgender athletes participating in women’s sports five years ago, the governor argued that wasn’t a priority this cycle, as voters stressed about the economy, job market and war with Iran.

“That was not the issue motivating voters. It was kind of like an attempt to just scare Republicans to vote,” DeSantis said. “Now, the issues are different, and Republicans, it seemed like in some of the ads I was seeing, with how much money they were spending, they really were fighting yesterday's battle.”

At the same time, DeSantis claimed Republicans were hurt by key decisions in Washington, such as voting against releasing the Epstein files, which was something they ran on just two years ago. He noted how President Donald Trump’s former Attorney General Pam Bondi fed into the voter outrage when she last year said the client list of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was sitting on her desk.

“That's a bad vote,” DeSantis said.

“You actually have people in Congress voting against release, when the attorney general said she had all this horrific stuff on her desk, and that people would be held accountable,” the governor added.

DeSantis also took aim at lawmakers failing to ban congressional stock trading, which he said “would be a breath of fresh air for everybody.” But he downplayed the role immigration enforcement might have played in the election, saying he didn’t think it was the “driving factor” for many voters.

Despite Republicans getting shut down in many states and even taking a hit in Florida, DeSantis pointed to voters backing conservative ballot measures, such as a major property tax cut in his state, as evidence Democrats didn’t run on a “positive agenda.”

“Democrats are unpopular,” DeSantis said. “They were able to win based off the sentiment that exists in the country right now. They did not earn a mandate to indulge all their left-wing fantasies.”

And when it came to the early parlor game around 2028 candidates, DeSantis was mum and left the door open to future decisions: "We'll talk about anything I'm doing on the other side of this. I still got more work to do.”