{"id":622683,"date":"2026-05-04T10:05:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T10:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/622683\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T10:05:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T10:05:18","slug":"trump-official-criticizes-spirit-airlines-for-saying-iran-war-drove-up-fuel-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/622683\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Official Criticizes Spirit Airlines For Saying Iran War Drove Up Fuel Prices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett<\/a> took a swipe at Spirit Airlines<\/a>, which ceased operations<\/a> on Saturday, for citing sky-high fuel prices driven by President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s war on Iran as a reason for its closure. <\/p>\n

\u201cAre other industries also at risk of collapse, or other major companies, due to this energy shock?\u201d CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Hassett on Sunday\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, don\u2019t forget, the Spirit Airlines was Chapter 11 twice because they basically didn\u2019t have a business model that was working,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

Hassett also said that other airlines were still operating, despite the soaring costs of jet fuel.<\/p>\n

\u2033[The other airlines] thought ahead way more than the management of Spirit [to] hedge their jet fuel purchases and so on so that energy, short-term energy shocks, don\u2019t have a big effect on their business,\u201d Hassett said. \u201dCertainly, it\u2019ll affect profits for the airlines for a quarter or so, but they\u2019re very, very healthy right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Brennan asked about the 11th-hour, $500 million rescue plan<\/a> the Trump administration had previously discussed for Spirit Airlines, Hassett took a jab at the Biden administration. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, hours before the airline shuttered, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters<\/a> at Newark Liberty International Airport that \u201cSpirit was in dire straits long before the war with Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duffy added <\/a>that Trump \u201cwas like a dog on a bone trying to figure out a way to keep Spirit afloat\u201d and prevent its shutdown, but he couldn\u2019t pull it off. <\/p>\n

Watch Hassett\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation\u201d appearance below. Skip to the 8:03 mark to hear his comments:<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett took a swipe at Spirit Airlines, which ceased operations on Saturday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,12,228242,143188,37419,53035],"class_list":["post-622683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran-war","tag-jet-fuel","tag-kevin-hassett","tag-spirit-airlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}