Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has blamed a letter written by Sen. Elizabeth Warren almost four years ago for the abrupt closure of Spirit Airlines.
The airline itself blamed its immediate shutdown on rising fuel costs due to the Iran war, and the falling through of a rescue deal with the Trump administration.
Bessent, 63, appeared on Sunday Morning Futures, and was asked by host Maria Bartiromo: “The treasury was supposed to be doing a deal to save this company. Can you tell us what happened?”
“So, this is just more of the mess we inherited from the Biden administration,” he responded.
He then said: “In September 2022, Elizabeth Warren—who loves to write letters—sent a letter to the Justice Department, to the Labor, to the Transport Department saying that they should oppose the merger with Spirit Airlines."
Speaking of the merger proposal first announced in July 2022 and dropped in March 2024, he added: “JetBlue wanted to buy them for $3.8 billion. It would have given them much more resiliency.”
Overlooking Spirit’s two bankruptcy filings since 2024, Bessent continued: “And she and the Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg—probably the worst transportation secretary in history when he came to the office—they were against the merger.
“And if JetBlue had merged with Spirit, we would have all these jobs that were lost yesterday. We had thirty airports—thirty regional airports who have lost service.”
Neither he, his department, nor the Trump administration had anything to do with the airline going out of business, by his account.
“I can tell you what happened here. It wasn’t Treasury, it was Commerce that was trying to put something together,” he said. “But the reason we were here was because the merger—the Biden administration opposed the merger. We shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”
Trump reportedly wanted his administration to give the budget airline $500 million in return for a stake worth up to 90 percent in the business before the deal fell through.
The huge bailout plan faced opposition from within the GOP, and was taken off the table Friday.
All Spirit operations have now ceased, with flights canceled and customer service shutdown as the airline’s workforce was suddenly fired en masse.
