Trump Official Criticizes Spirit Airlines For Saying Iran War Drove Up Fuel Prices | EUROtoday

Top White House financial adviser Kevin Hassett took a swipe at Spirit Airlines, which ceased operations on Saturday, for citing sky-high gasoline costs pushed by President Donald Trump’s warfare on Iran as a motive for its closure.

“Are other industries also at risk of collapse, or other major companies, due to this energy shock?” CBS host Margaret Brennan requested Hassett on Sunday’s “Face the Nation.”

“Well, don’t forget, the Spirit Airlines was Chapter 11 twice because they basically didn’t have a business model that was working,” he replied.

Hassett additionally stated that different airways have been nonetheless working, regardless of the hovering prices of jet gasoline.

″[The other airlines] thought forward far more than the administration of Spirit [to] hedge their jet gasoline purchases and so forth so that power, short-term power shocks, don’t have a giant impact on their enterprise,” Hassett stated. ”Certainly, it’ll have an effect on income for the airways for 1 / 4 or so, however they’re very, very wholesome proper now.”

When Brennan requested concerning the Eleventh-hour, $500 million rescue plan the Trump administration had beforehand mentioned for Spirit Airlines, Hassett took a jab on the Biden administration.

“We were aware that, because the merger between JetBlue and Spirit was canceled unwisely by the Biden administration, that Spirit, sadly, was on the ropes. When we looked at their books, that basically, the creditors were going to liquidate them and try to sell their assets so that they could get some of the money back that they had lent them,” he stated.

On Saturday, hours earlier than the airline shuttered, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy instructed reporters at Newark Liberty International Airport that “Spirit was in dire straits long before the war with Iran.”

Duffy added that Trump “was like a dog on a bone trying to figure out a way to keep Spirit afloat” and forestall its shutdown, however he couldn’t pull it off.

Watch Hassett’s “Face the Nation” look under. Skip to the 8:03 mark to listen to his feedback: