Corporate America witnessed the first major casualty of Donald Trump’s Iran war oil shock this weekend, with the shuttering of Spirit Airlines — the steerage-in-the-sky budget carrier that pioneered the fee bonanza that now dominates air travel.
In a press release announcing the closure, Spirit Airlines CEO Dave Davis wrote that the decision had been made in light of “the sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices in recent weeks” that had pushed the company to the brink.
While the reason for Spirit’s demise is crystal clear, the Trump administration is offering up an alternative explanation, one that erases their role in the looming economic crisis created by the president’s reckless foreign militancy.
During a Monday morning appearance on Fox News, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attempted to blame rising jet fuel prices and the airline’s collapse on Democrats and Joe Biden.
“To be really clear, yeah, jet fuel prices have gone up. This story was not written because of the Iran war. This story was written because of Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and the DOJ under Biden,” Duffy claimed. The secretary referenced a planned merger between Spirit Airlines and Jet Blue that was blocked after a federal judge ruled the takeover would violate antitrust laws and reduce competition for low-budget travelers.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), quickly jumped on the idea that Democrats are to blame for Spirit Airlines folding, posting a photo of O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson. The photo labeled O.J. as “Elizabeth Warren,” and Brown Simpson as “Spirit Airlines.”
The allegation was directly contradicted by Spirit Airlines, which wrote in their closure announcement that the sudden spike in operational costs had disrupted the implementation of a major “restructuring plan that would have allowed us to emerge as a go-forward business.”
Jet fuel prices have nearly doubled globally as Trump’s war against Iran throttles oil transportation through the Strait of Hormuz. Virtually every major American carrier has raised add-on fees for travelers in an attempt to offset fuel costs. Logistics and shipping companies, a less visible yet massive sector of airline operations, are also raising costs and setting off a ripple effect of higher prices.
Yet two months into the war, with negotiations locked in a stalemate, the Trump administration is insisting that this is still just a temporary blip, and that everything will be back to normal at some indeterminate point in the theoretical future.
“We are cognizant that this short-term blip up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident on the other side of this that prices are going to come down very quickly.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in his own Monday morning Fox News interview. “The stock market is looking through this,” he added, referring to the president’s favorite metric of ensuring that the ultra-wealthy aren’t suffering too much under his governance.
Duffy not only blamed Democrats for Spirit Airlines crashing, he derided the party for “making hay” out of the war and claimed the opposition “loves higher energy prices.” According to Duffy, the real “war” is the “war on energy” Democrats are waging against fossil fuels. “At some point we have to have a little bit [of a] longer viewpoint,” Duffy said, as if the end date of the conflict isn’t a Republican mirage that keeps getting further away.
It’s Trump, however, who has openly suggested that high energy prices are a good thing. “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he wrote on Truth Social in March.
Who is this “we”? Oil companies. American oil companies are making boatloads of money, partly because other nations are competing for a restricted global supply, and because Americans themselves are paying a premium for their products at the pump.
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