Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) suggested Wednesday that Democrats’ triumph in the midterm elections was primarily due to Republicans’ unwillingness to enact “bold conservative” legislation.

And many GOP voters stayed away because of that, he said.

The governor, who is perhaps trying to position himself for another run at the presidency after his failed 2024 attempt, declared the Democratic takeover of the House and Senate to be an unquestionable rebuke of President Donald Trump and Congress. But DeSantis zeroed in on what he saw as Congress’ shortage of right-wing lawmaking.

“If you’re going to do huge conservative things that are going to reorient the country for a generation, fine,” DeSantis told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday. “But I saw no indication that the current group of Republican senators were interested in doing that type of bold conservative change. I mean, why haven’t we done immigration? Shut off H-1B visas? Why haven’t we codified Trump’s immigration executive orders? Why haven’t we stripped jurisdiction from the federal courts over deportation cases?”

The governor continued to press his point.

“I’d love to see all this great stuff being done,” he said. “I just never saw an indication that they did it. And look, this midterm, no question, was a rebuke of the president and the Congress by Democrats, independents, and some Republicans that crossed over. But a lot of our voters who stayed home, they stayed home because they were frustrated with the lack of productivity from Republicans in the House and Senate. That’s a fact.”

Earlier in the day, DeSantis called Democrats’ historic sweep of the House and Senate “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans” but noted how his state weathered the onslaught with victories for the GOP’s Byron Donalds for governor and Ashley Moody for senator.

DeSantis was tracking fourth among Republicans in an aggregation of recent 2028 presidential polls by The New York Times.