Ben Ferguson (3:35)
I want to start off by just being really honest about what we've just witnessed with the Spirit Airlines shutdown. It is a super low cost airline. Elizabeth Warren, and I'm going to take you back in time, put this out on Twitter on March 5th of 2024. It has now gone viral. Yet again, Elizabeth Warren and her socialist wackos decided to stop a merger that could have saved Spirit Airlines. Her exact words were this. I warned for months that a JetBlue Spirit Airlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares. Well, we know that she's either incredibly stupid or a pathological liar because the thing that she warned would happen because she stopped that merger has actually happened today. Fewer Americans have choices over flights and all Americans now have higher fares. She then went on to say that the justice and the antitrust division at justice, as well as the United States Department of Transportation, back in again, this is back in 2024. We're right to stand up, she says, for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation. She then said, this is a Biden win for Flyers. Say that again, Elizabeth Warren. This is a Biden win for Flyers. So let's look at where we are now. Spirit Airlines died this weekend and it died at the hands of the socialist crusader Elizabeth Warren. She must be so proud to add another casket to her achievements is what one person wrote online. At 3am Spirit turned off the lights directly. More than 14,000 jobs gone. 30 plus smaller airports lost service. Now this all because of the Biden doj, because of the Department of Transportation, Mayor Pete and Elizabeth Warren, JetBlue. By the way, this matters in life, like the facts and history. At the time, JetBlue offered $3.8 billion in cash to buy Spirit Airlines in 2022. What's even more interesting about that offer was who all agreed? Shareholders agreed. Flight attendants, unions agreed. Literally everyone voted yes. Why? Because they knew this was the only save the airline. Now, the combined company of JetBlue and Spirit would have held only 9% of the US market against a big four that already owned 80%. Now, for anyone that understands numbers, 9% isn't a monopoly against 80%. But Elizabeth Warren and her communist friends at the DOJ and the Biden administration said no. Now, this wasn't an afterthought for Elizabeth Warren. I want to be clear. She was obsessed with this merger. She wrote letters. She pressured Mayor Pete, who was the Transportation secretary. Biden's DOJ got involved and then sued a federal judge, finally killed the deal in January of 2024. And that is when Spirit died, even though it took a little more time. Now, Elizabeth Warren, in the communist argument was very clear. They lied and said the merger would cost consumers 1 billion a year. Well, let's just look at the collateral damage that she does under the rug like it never happened. And so many other Democrats. You have more than 500 pilots gone in the months after January 2024. You had 1800 flight attendants that were furloughed in December. You had then another 14,000 jobs that were lost in 2023. And then last week, another 7,500. How many people do they employ now? Zero. And that's just the people that were actually wearing Spirit Airlines uniforms. There's other jobs that are gone as well. And you need to understand this. And by the way, all this that I'm saying to you right now, I have put out this retweet on X. You can see it, and you can use this. It's important. All right? You had catering. That is not a direct job of Spirit. It's an indirect job because of the industry. Those catering jobs, gone. The fuel guys, they're gone. The baggage crews, not Spirit employees, gone. The gate agents, gone. The airport coffee shops that service those where they were go. You know, where Spirit Airlines flew in and out of, they're now hurting, are gone. Then you had all the hotels and all the rental cars in the 70 cities that spirit flew to. Every airline job. And this is using the Biden, by the way, their own numbers, the government's numbers. Right now, every airline job carries 3 more on its back, meaning that if you got 10,000 there's another 30,000 jobs. Because of the 10,000 direct airline jobs, you now have 40,000 people out of work because of the socialist communists and Marxist morons and their crusade against the markets doing what they need to do in the private sector. Spirit, by the way, you have another fallout from all this. Spirit has now abandoned 90 routes during the death spiral. Fares on those routes are costing you the American people. And remember I, if I remember correctly, Democrats say over and over again what they stand up for. Poor people, little people, right? They stand up for the people that are living paycheck, paycheck. Who do you think Spirit Airlines was serving? They were an ultra low carrier cost carrier, that's who they were. Some people called them the Greyhound of the skies. By the way, I did everything I could to avoid Spirit Airlines. We've all seen the videos that have gone viral of the fighting on airplanes, the fighting at the ticket counters and the fighting at the bag check in. Like we've all seen it, right? I will. I've, I've flown Spirit in my whole life, I think twice. And it was because it was the only flight that worked that day after there was another flight that was canceled. Scenario. But for many Americans this was the difference between going on a trip and not going on a trip, going on a vacation, not going on a vacation, going on a trip that they had to go for because of a family, that member that was sick or a funeral and not going. Spirit not only abandoned is now 90 routes during the death spiral, but fares on those routes, remember that's what Elizabeth Warren said. We can't have this merger because the fares are going to go up. Well guess what's happened now. The fares are on up average of 14%. Let me give you some real numbers. Oakland and New York has skyrocketed from $135 to 288. Fort Myers to San Juan has skyrocketed from $92 to 219. And now it's probably going to go even higher. Kansas City for example, to newark is up 66%. All right, that's not by the way, I want to be clear. This is reality. This isn't some BS made up number from some random study. This is really the life consequences of, of when the government got involved in something they should have never been involved in stopping this merger. Senator Warren is an individual who will look you in the eyes and tell you she's doing you a favor while destroying a company and 17, 18, 19, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 jobs. And then is held accountable, apparently by no one for doing this. Here's something else that's interesting. Cheap carriers in a market drop fares on average 21% across the board. Southwest, by the way, when they used to be a low cost carrier, they're no longer right. They're one of the big four now, in my opinion. All right, Southwest did this in the 1990s. Do you know how much money they say that Southwest Airlines being in their markets where the other airlines, the Uniteds, the Continentals, the Americans, the Deltas flew into, do you know how much money they say that? The American people say because Southwest Airlines were went into these cities, they, because they pushed fares down, not up. There was more options, more choice, and the other airlines had to match to stay competitive. Southwest Airlines, they say in the 1990s saved Americans $68 billion over 20 years. I'm going to say that again. Studies say that Southwest Airlines, when they were a cheap carrier, saved Americans 68 billion over 20 years. And so what did Elizabeth Warren do? She killed the next Southwest Airlines. She killed it. And what was a moronic political play led by socialism, the socialist ideals, is what cost Spirit Airlines the ability to be able to merge with JetBlue. And then with her own blind arrogance, she actually tweeted that the Spirit collapse is a Biden win for Flyers. A win? Yes. 14,000 jobs terminated. Yeah, she says that's a good thing. She also wants you to believe that Spirit lost because of the war in Iran. That's her new talking point. She wants you to believe that Spirit Airlines was somehow totally fine and not in bankruptcy before the war in Iran, and that this is all Donald Trump's fault. And if you believe that, you're a special kind of stupid. This is a senator, by the way. And this is the problem with Washington. They don't understand the private sector. They don't understand what it means to run a business. Elizabeth Warren's never made payroll. Payroll in her life. Right. She thinks she knows how to run a market and a business better than the people who actually own and work in the company, because she's never actually held a real job or employed a significant number of people in the private sector. So she's going to sit there and she's going to say, hey, I saved you a billion dollars on imaginary paper, when in fact she costs 10 times that in real life. She didn't protect consumers from anything. You've got 40,000 jobs. And by the way, where are they going to go, they're going to go ask for government help. Many of them, some of them are going to end up on welfare. And then she says, well, you know, you should blame, oh, the evil billionaires in America, the millionaires and the billionaires. That's who you need to blame. And by the way, she now has power over people that are desperate for government aid. Maybe that was her plan all along. It makes you think.
