DeSantis warns GOP facing 'extinction-level event' after Trump's Iran gaslighting

Ron DeSantis has launched a scathing attack on Donald Trump, warning that the Republican Party is facing "an extinction-level event" following a devastating midterm performance. Speaking at a press conference in Tallahassee, the outgoing Florida governor singled out the loss of the Texas governor and Senate races, describing the state as the "crown jewel of Republican politics" according to the Daily Mail ^[1].

"If the Republican Party doesn't have Texas as an anchor, then we are not going to be viable nationally going forward," DeSantis stated, arguing the defeats would reverberate for a decade. He attributed much of the damage to the ongoing US-Iran war, which he claimed has driven up gas prices and alienated working-class voters.

In a podcast interview with Stephen A. Smith, DeSantis accused the administration of "gaslighting" voters by refusing to admit the conflict's economic impact. "Gas is higher. It hurts working-class people, and it's higher because of this conflict. That's just a fact," he said, noting that Trump had campaigned against Middle East wars but delivered one anyway.

The Florida governor predicted further losses, posting on X that Democrats would reach 55 Senate seats and over 250 House seats. He suggested Republicans might not regain control of the Senate until 2032. This comes as Trump-backed Byron Donalds narrowly won the Florida governorship, becoming the state's first black governor, though his victory margin of roughly 1.3 points was far slimmer than DeSantis's 2022 landslide.

DeSantis's aggressive stance has immediately fuelled speculation about a 2028 presidential bid. On prediction market Kalshi, his odds for the Republican nomination jumped more than 14 points overnight to 19 percent, trailing Vice President JD Vance (31 percent) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (22 percent). Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, a Florida resident, told the Daily Mail that "Ron is going to run," arguing DeSantis would become irrelevant if he waited another four years.

The GOP is now engaged in what two strategists told the Daily Mail is a period of "soul-searching" over whether MAGA candidates remain viable without Trump, who is term-limited. Trump himself conceded in a Truth Social post that candidate quality was an issue his campaigning could not solve. As the president looks for someone to blame for what one strategist described as a "blue tsunami," the race for 2028 has effectively begun, with DeSantis positioning himself as a sharp critic of the administration's foreign policy failures.