David Mcnew/Getty Images After struggling to tread water for the past few years and filing for bankruptcy twice last year, Spirit Airlines has finally collapsed. The canary yellow carrier abruptly canceled all its flights early Saturday morning and announced that it started "an orderly wind-down of operations, effectively immediately." While Spirit hoped to emerge as a restructured airline after its second bankruptcy, the spike in jet fuel prices caused by President Donald Trump's war against Iran made it impossible for the carrier to continue operations without financial assistance, according to documents the company filed in bankruptcy court. While Trump might have shuffled Spirit off this mortal coil, he did attempt to keep the low-cost airline in operation. However, it was less of a bailout and more of a takeover. The proposed deal would have given $500 million to Spirit, but the federal government would have taken a 90% stake in the airline. According to CNN, Trump even wanted a seat for himself on the airline's board. Spirit's shareholders understandably rejected the deal and let the airline fail, leaving 14,000 employees without work. Trump will blame anyone but himself Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images The Trump administration was eager to lay the blame for Spirit's demise on its Democratic predecessors, even before the airline was gone. Ignoring the poor business practices that put Spirit in its predicament, Trump claims that Joe Biden's blocking a $3.8 billion acquisition by JetBlue actually killed Spirit. The merger would likely have led to the same outcome as an outright collapse, with airfares rising in the absence of a large no-cost carrier to provide market competition. Sleepy Joe isn't the only past President catching strays. Defying time and space, Trump even blamed President Obama for not allowing Spirit to merge with People Express. He said in the Oval Office two weeks ago: "So, Spirit is, uh, an airline that's had some trouble. They were going to merge with People Express, or one of them, a number of years ago and Barack Hussein Obama decided it was a bad idea. How did that work out? It was bad for both of them. That would've been a natural merger." Don't remember People Express? It was a low-cost carrier that collapsed in 1987, five years before Spirit began scheduled flights and Obama was still a community organizer in Chicago. Trump's disapproval rating has already hit an all-time record high. An airline collapsing, stranding passengers and leaving thousands of people unemployed, isn't popular with anyone. Trump is floundering and doesn't know what else to do but deflect the blame.
