Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 04, 2026


Democrats Kill your Spirit—How Biden, Warren & Buttigieg Destroyed Spirit Air


Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

153.16

Word count

4,998

Sentence count

339

Harmful content

Misogyny

8

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Spirit Airlines has gone bankrupt and 17,000 employees have lost their jobs. Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Fergus break down the story of what happened and why it happened. They also talk about the incredible work the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (ICFJ) is doing to help people in Israel.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.560 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.820 Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson.
00:00:08.060 With you, Senator, as we are doing this show, it was a pretty crazy week.
00:00:12.460 For airline flyers, especially if you were on Spirit Airlines,
00:00:17.080 this was a crisis that was created by the prior administration.
00:00:22.760 They had been struggling for a while, and there was a bailout, in essence,
00:00:27.060 in the private sector with JetBlue merger.
00:00:29.040 And guess who stopped it?
00:00:30.500 Yeah, the Biden administration.
00:00:32.680 And Americans need to know this story.
00:00:34.860 It's really important.
00:00:36.860 Well, it is now an objective fact that Democrats kill your spirit.
00:00:42.900 That, of course, means Spirit Airlines.
00:00:46.680 As of this week, 17,000 employees have lost their jobs.
00:00:52.100 Now, look, Spirit was always an ultra-budget airline.
00:00:56.740 They always had challenges in their business model.
00:01:00.740 Those challenges resulted in, for years, Spirit losing money, and their customer service has been consistently at the very bottom of airlines.
00:01:14.500 All that being said, in 2024, Spirit had a plan to survive, and the plan was to merge with JetBlue.
00:01:22.640 JetBlue is another budget airline, but unlike Spirit, JetBlue actually manages to provide pretty decent customer service.
00:01:32.020 And both JetBlue and Spirit believed combined they would be a much more effective competitor and able to turn a profit.
00:01:40.780 And in fact, Spirit Airlines believed the only way Spirit could survive is if it merged with JetBlue.
00:01:50.240 Well, that would have happened, except then the Democrats came along to kill it.
00:01:55.680 Elizabeth Warren led the charge, saying, we must stop JetBlue and Spirit from merging.
00:02:02.760 Pete Buttigieg led the charge.
00:02:04.720 Merrick Garland led the charge.
00:02:06.320 And Joe Biden led the charge.
00:02:08.120 And they succeeded in blocking the merger.
00:02:10.820 And now this week, Spirit has gone totally bankrupt, which is what they said would happen
00:02:15.200 if they were not allowed to merge with JetBlue.
00:02:17.980 and 17,000 people have lost their jobs.
00:02:22.620 We're going to break it all down for you on today's pod.
00:02:25.440 Yeah, it's an incredible story.
00:02:27.220 And before we get into that,
00:02:28.380 I want to just talk to you about
00:02:29.540 the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews,
00:02:32.800 the incredible work that they're doing
00:02:34.500 to help people in Israel right now.
00:02:36.560 And so many of you that have gotten involved,
00:02:38.400 number one, thank you,
00:02:39.380 but there's still a lot of work to get done.
00:02:41.300 And for many of you that haven't gotten involved,
00:02:44.000 this is your moment where you can have a huge impact
00:02:46.640 on people's lives in Israel.
00:02:48.820 All right, I want to take a moment
00:02:50.000 and I want to talk to you about the incredible impact
00:02:52.220 that you can have for the people of Israel right now.
00:02:55.520 Right now, our Jewish friends are feeling forgotten.
00:02:59.360 There's a Jewish woman named Esther
00:03:01.180 I'd like to tell you about, and her home is in Israel.
00:03:04.740 Esther is living through days and nights of fear.
00:03:07.660 Sirens are sounding, rockets screaming through the sky,
00:03:11.020 long stretches spent in a bomb shelter.
00:03:13.980 She's 84 years old.
00:03:15.640 Esther is elderly, she's fragile and all alone
00:03:18.880 Now imagine that, no help, no food deliveries, no medical care, no one knocking at the door
00:03:24.740 It's a war zone, but because of friends like you, Esther is not alone
00:03:29.880 Now through the IFCJ, they are there bringing her food, meeting her urgent needs
00:03:36.480 And reminding Jewish people like Esther, you are not forgotten
00:03:40.820 In times of fear and uncertainty, your compassion brings hope and real help.
00:03:46.740 Esther asks that you hear these words, quote,
00:03:49.840 To those who give, you are doing a very great mitzvah, a good deed.
00:03:54.360 You give from your heart.
00:03:56.100 May God protect you.
00:03:58.160 Friends, I want you to know that your gift to God's people is truly hope-giving and life-saving.
00:04:04.200 So if you've not gotten involved with the IFCJ, please do it now and don't wait.
00:04:09.160 Call 888-488-IFCJ right now.
00:04:15.100 That's 888-488-IFCJ.
00:04:18.860 Or go to ifcj.org.
00:04:21.340 That's ifcj.org.
00:04:23.620 All right, Senator, so let's get back to the history of Spirit Airlines.
00:04:27.680 There was a very interesting post, and it went viral on X.
00:04:32.020 And an individual just said,
00:04:33.320 Spirit Airlines died tonight at the hands of socialist crusader Elizabeth Warren. 0.87
00:04:37.700 She must be proud to add another casket to her achievements.
00:04:40.880 Tonight at 3 a.m., Spirit turned off the lights.
00:04:43.640 14,000 jobs directly gone, 30-plus smaller airports lost service.
00:04:48.320 We now know those numbers are way bigger of the number of job losses,
00:04:51.540 not just direct but indirect.
00:04:53.640 And to go back and remind the American people,
00:04:56.340 JetBlue offered $3.8 billion in cash to buy Spirit in 2022.
00:05:02.460 The shareholders, the flight attendants union,
00:05:05.240 And literally everyone involved voted yes.
00:05:08.460 The combined company would have held 9% of the U.S. market against the big four that already owned 80%.
00:05:14.820 And they were saying, oh, this could create a monopoly.
00:05:18.260 All right, those numbers don't add up to a monopoly. 0.77
00:05:20.800 Elizabeth Warren led the charge, as you mentioned. 0.97
00:05:23.060 She said no.
00:05:24.280 She wrote letters.
00:05:25.040 She pressured Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was then in charge of the Department of Transportation.
00:05:29.680 Then the Biden Department of Justice sued.
00:05:31.640 A federal judge killed the deal in January of 2024.
00:05:34.920 Her argument was simple.
00:05:36.260 The merger would cost consumers a billion a year.
00:05:38.600 Well, now look at the collateral damage.
00:05:40.960 This is the fault of the left who doesn't understand business
00:05:45.140 and these socialists like Elizabeth Warren, in my opinion.
00:05:48.920 Well, and understood.
00:05:50.540 Spirit Airlines was offered $3.8 billion just two years ago.
00:05:55.400 That would have been the difference,
00:05:57.240 or could well have been the difference,
00:05:58.560 between surviving and going under.
00:06:01.520 And yet, as a result of Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden, Spirit got zero.
00:06:09.300 You look at Spirit and JetBlue are two of the smallest players in the entire arena.
00:06:15.140 They're competing against much bigger airlines.
00:06:18.760 And so they were trying to come together to have some scale to be a more effective competitor.
00:06:24.540 When the Biden administration blocked the merger, Elizabeth Warren celebrated. 0.93
00:06:31.580 Here's what she tweeted out.
00:06:32.920 Quote, I've warned for months that a JetBlue Spirit Airlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares.
00:06:42.060 The U.S. Department of Transportation was right to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation.
00:06:51.680 This is a Biden win for flyers.
00:06:55.340 Now, I gotta say that last sentence,
00:06:56.720 she's absolutely accurate.
00:06:58.680 This is a Biden win for flyers.
00:07:00.860 You wanna see what a Biden win is?
00:07:02.780 It is 17,000 people losing their jobs.
00:07:06.040 It is small communities losing the air travel
00:07:10.020 that was going into and out of those communities.
00:07:12.540 And it is less competition,
00:07:15.040 which means ticket prices will rise.
00:07:17.980 Altogether, it is a disaster for consumers, which is exactly what a Biden win for flyers is.
00:07:24.600 Now, today, I guess Elizabeth Warren realizes that there's a problem, that this is not good.
00:07:34.060 So today, she's tweeting something different.
00:07:37.100 Now she is tweeting, the big four airlines, American, Delta, Southwest, United, control 75% of the U.S. market.
00:07:48.460 Fewer choices equals higher prices for you.
00:07:52.340 Now once again, her last sentence is exactly right.
00:07:55.520 Fewer choices equals higher prices for you.
00:07:59.020 And guess what Elizabeth Warren just gave you?
00:08:01.780 Fewer choices, which means higher prices for you.
00:08:05.780 This is misguided government control, and sadly, it has real consequences.
00:08:11.960 You know, it was going viral, the last Spirit Airline flight to be actually carrying passengers.
00:08:18.920 And the official sign-off that came into Texas in the DFW airport, the flight attendants, or air traffic control, I should say,
00:08:27.240 they even said, hey, we wish you guys luck, you know, after an airline that had been around for quite some time,
00:08:33.160 and we feel for you guys, it's not just the 17,000 jobs that you mentioned directly.
00:08:40.580 That was just the people in Spirit uniforms.
00:08:43.280 The catering people, they're gone.
00:08:45.720 The fuel guys, they've lost their job.
00:08:47.960 The baggage crews for those airplanes, they're gone.
00:08:50.840 The gate agents, they're gone.
00:08:52.460 The airport coffee shops, the hotels, the rental cars in 70 cities that Spirit flew to,
00:08:58.920 that's going to change.
00:08:59.840 every airline job they say carries three more on its back so in infrastructure because of that one
00:09:07.780 job in the industry so you're now talking about on an honest number of about 40 plus thousand
00:09:14.180 people that are either out of work or are basically losing major income all because
00:09:20.080 Elizabeth Warren's insane crusade against you know this quote consolidation when she just 1.00
00:09:27.560 doesn't understand business or the math. Now you talk about the other fallout center and that is 1.00
00:09:35.160 Spirit abandoned 90 routes during the death spiral. Fares on those routes went up about 15%
00:09:41.740 on average. Oakland to Newark, for example, went from 135 to 288. Fort Myers of San Juan went from
00:09:48.940 $92 to $219. Kansas City to New York went up 66%. So now every consumer out there is probably going
00:09:57.840 to be paying a lot more money because of her not understanding business. Well, and Elizabeth 0.99
00:10:04.140 Warren's spin, and we're seeing this repeated by a lot of the corporate media, she tweeted out this 0.99
00:10:10.160 week, quote, spiking fuel prices from Trump's war was the nail in the coffin for twice bankrupted
00:10:17.560 Spirit Airline. And their whole spin on this is, well, it's entirely because of fuel prices and
00:10:23.080 that's because of Trump. And look, understand their talking point is always everything bad
00:10:27.880 is because of Trump. It is true that fuel prices have gone up during this military conflict with
00:10:33.460 Iran, a military conflict that I believe is making America substantially safer.
00:10:39.360 Fuel prices go up, they go down. That is part of running an airline. Every other airline is
00:10:44.340 dealing with fuel prices going up. And ask yourself one question. Would Spirit be better
00:10:51.760 or worse dealing with higher fuel prices if it had merged with JetBlue and had an additional
00:10:59.400 $3.8 billion? Now, that is a question that answers itself. It is obvious. Now, look,
00:11:06.780 is it possible that even if Spirit and JetBlue had merged, that they might ultimately not survive?
00:11:13.900 Sure, that's possible, but the odds of the combined company surviving are much, much higher, and now because Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg jumped in and killed it, spirit is gone, and I want you to listen to Pete Buttigieg cheering on their efforts to block this merger.
00:11:36.120 Give a listen.
00:11:37.540 Our department, the Department of Transportation, has generally not gotten involved in these merger cases, but that's changing today.
00:11:46.340 It is so important to make sure that passengers have choices, that they have access to low fares, that they have access to competition.
00:11:55.260 And yet we've seen less and less and less of that competition over the years.
00:11:59.640 We are taking a step that, again, is unusual in terms of recent years, but we think is the right thing to do, supporting the DOJ's lawsuit and independently using our own authorities, which are a little bit different from the DOJ, starting our own investigation and taking other actions.
00:12:16.780 This is, again, goes back to when you don't understand business and you don't understand what's happening in the marketplace.
00:12:25.360 You go and you look. There was studies that were done talking about cheap carriers and markets drop fares by an average of 21 percent across the board.
00:12:35.320 Southwest, by the way, did this in the 90s. They saved Americans about 68 billion over 20 years in fares.
00:12:42.500 And Elizabeth Warren killed it and said, oh, I'm giving you more choice.
00:12:47.020 Well, do we have more or less choice today?
00:12:48.900 Are we closer or further away from a monopoly?
00:12:52.240 Senator, you already answered those two questions.
00:12:55.040 Well, Pete Buttigieg further tweeted in 2023, quote,
00:12:58.700 Americans deserve robust competition and affordable airfares.
00:13:02.860 U.S. Department of Transportation supports DOJ's antitrust lawsuit,
00:13:07.220 and we plan to deny the JetBlue Spirit request for an exemption on their merger deal.
00:13:11.760 We will continue with our own investigation while supporting DOJ's work.
00:13:16.940 Now, that policy obviously failed.
00:13:20.700 It was a disaster.
00:13:22.300 And by the way, if you're not inclined to believe me on this, maybe you would believe Neera Tanden.
00:13:29.060 So who was Neera Tanden?
00:13:30.180 Neera Tanden is a Democrat.
00:13:32.060 She was the head of the Domestic Policy Council in the Biden White House.
00:13:35.060 So she is a senior policy person in the Biden White House.
00:13:39.200 Here's what she tweeted this week.
00:13:41.120 quote, given the news today that Spirit Airlines is shuttering and thousands of people are losing
00:13:48.660 their jobs, I think we should honestly assess whether the Garland DOJ stopping the JetBlue
00:13:55.700 merger with Spirit Airlines was the right call. Perhaps it was, but any analysis must consider
00:14:02.760 as part of the equation, the loss to so many families to decide. Look, to her credit,
00:14:12.060 that is, now, I think she got some real pushback as Democrats screamed, no, no, no reason allowed,
00:14:19.500 because then she put a second comment, Lord, of course Trump's war was the Spirit Airlines killer
00:14:24.720 here. I'm simply asking if we should assess all the evidence. I'm expecting the third tweet to
00:14:30.320 I have now been located to witness protection because no Democrat is allowed to dissent on anything.
00:14:37.560 But good for her for a moment.
00:14:39.360 She hasn't, as of right now, deleted the tweet.
00:14:44.680 It is kind of amusing.
00:14:46.740 The first one was sent at 5.54 a.m.
00:14:49.880 And then the clarification, oh, no, no, no, it wasn't us.
00:14:52.740 It was Trump.
00:14:53.200 It was Trump was at 10.39 a.m.
00:14:55.300 Yeah, that's after you get a lot of heat from people, right?
00:14:58.280 Oh, enormous heat.
00:14:59.300 You're not allowed to say anything remotely honest, remotely reasonable.
00:15:05.500 Instead, it is a partisan line is the only thing that is acceptable.
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00:15:41.640 to see you at the show kiss all the time disco occasionally available now you you go back to
00:15:48.360 when this merger and it was it was an issue right and and and they decide to flex their muscles i'm
00:15:54.100 still trying to understand exactly why they thought this was a a good idea like like like
00:16:01.800 what what who was behind it that's the other question i have or or is it just they genuinely
00:16:07.620 have no idea how the private sector works or is this just socialism and the way that they do
00:16:13.960 socialism where they're just like oh we get involved in anything to flex our muscles and
00:16:17.800 show you our power because we think government is better than everybody else yeah look i i think
00:16:23.660 it's they have very little understanding of basic economics and they believe government power is
00:16:28.540 always the right answer. While Spirit and JetBlue were litigating to merge, here's what they said.
00:16:35.060 They said, quote, we continue to believe that our combination is the best opportunity to increase
00:16:40.480 much needed competition and choice by bringing low fares and great service to more customers
00:16:45.700 in more markets while enhancing our ability to compete with the dominant US carriers. And look,
00:16:51.960 Often when you have a couple of giant providers, by the way, there was chatter last month about United and American merging.
00:17:00.560 I think that would be terrible.
00:17:01.820 Those are both major and dominant providers, and they quickly abandoned that.
00:17:07.520 American put out a public statement saying we're not interested in merging with United.
00:17:12.240 That merger would unquestionably have run into real antitrust concerns because when you have dominant market players combining,
00:17:21.040 That's what the antitrust laws are designed for.
00:17:24.520 In this instance, you had two relatively small players in the most vulnerable position wanting to join forces so that they could be more effective competitors against the big guys.
00:17:37.880 The antitrust law is actually designed to allow that and even encourage that, and yet the federal judge in Boston, Massachusetts, who entered the order blocking the merger, wrote the following, quote,
00:17:52.480 While it is understandable that JetBlue seeks inorganic growth through acquisition of aircraft that would eliminate one of its primary competitors, the proposed acquisition in this court's attempt to predict the future in murky times does violence to the core principle of antitrust law to protect the United States' markets and its market participants from anti-competitive harm.
00:18:17.340 Now, let me stop right there, and we're going to get a little bit wonky on two things.
00:18:21.800 Number one, what the court said, which was repeating what the Biden DOJ had said to it, is flat out wrong as to the purpose of antitrust law.
00:18:32.200 Antitrust law is not designed to protect market participants from anti-competitive harm.
00:18:39.500 It is designed to protect consumers.
00:18:42.340 That is a very different concept.
00:18:44.480 So when Democrats are in charge, they want to use government to protect one competitor from another.
00:18:54.320 The purpose of the antitrust laws is to protect consumers, and the way you do that is by having robust competition.
00:19:03.660 In this instance, JetBlue and Spirit combined would have been a much more effective competitor than the two splintered apart.
00:19:12.440 And the antitrust analysis typically looks at one of the central questions is what percentage of the relevant market are the players that are seeking to merge?
00:19:24.740 The way that DOJ managed to hoodwink the court into blocking the merger is they didn't define the market as commercial air travel.
00:19:35.820 Like in any normal world, that's what you would think of.
00:19:38.380 If I wanna fly from Houston to New York,
00:19:41.320 my market is, who can I go buy a ticket from
00:19:44.020 that flies me there?
00:19:45.460 That would be a normal way to assess it.
00:19:47.340 So then you would look at JetBlue and Spirit
00:19:50.060 and you would compare them to American, Delta, United,
00:19:53.740 Southwest, and then that would be the market.
00:19:55.780 And looking at it that way,
00:19:57.780 JetBlue and Spirit are really small players in that.
00:20:00.580 Well, what DOJ argued is, no, no, no.
00:20:02.780 The argument is not airline travel.
00:20:06.020 The market is not airline travel.
00:20:07.860 The market is ultra-budget airline travel.
00:20:12.380 So it basically defined the market as JetBlue and Spirit.
00:20:17.200 And then it said, well, gosh, then if these two combine, there'd be no competition in the market. 1.00
00:20:22.680 That is an idiotic way to look at it. 0.99
00:20:26.020 They literally hurt the lowest-cost competitors. 0.99
00:20:30.860 And it is the presence of low-cost competitors and competitors fighting with each other that drives down prices.
00:20:37.700 And the consequence is they left the lowest cost provider completely vulnerable.
00:20:45.200 And by the way, this was not a mystery.
00:20:47.660 Both Spirit and JetBlue were telling them this over and over and over again.
00:20:52.760 Do you know what the Biden administration said when the merger was blocked?
00:20:59.220 What'd they say?
00:21:00.840 Attorney General Merrick Garland said the statement that the ruling, quote,
00:21:03.760 is a victory for tens of millions of travelers who would have faced higher fares and fewer choices
00:21:10.620 had the proposed merger between JetBlue and Spirit been allowed to go forward.
00:21:15.740 Garland added that DOJ, quote, will continue to vigorously enforce the nation's antitrust laws
00:21:21.340 to protect American consumers. Now, every word of that is gobbledygook and wrong. And right now,
00:21:30.300 17,000 workers have lost their job and American consumers are facing fewer choices and higher
00:21:39.520 prices. Love, generosity and compassion. We say those words all the time and they sound good.
00:21:46.160 They feel good. But here's the truth. Those words don't mean anything unless they turn into action.
00:21:52.600 And right now, not later today, not tomorrow, there's a child in the world who doesn't know
00:21:59.080 if they'll eat, if they'll have a chance to learn, or if there's any hope at all.
00:22:05.320 And while we're all busy, life keeps moving forward, but that child is waiting.
00:22:11.140 This is where you come in.
00:22:13.180 With Compassion International, you have the chance to change a child's future,
00:22:17.400 not just with words, not with promises, but with real help that provides food, education,
00:22:23.680 and hope through local churches and people already in their community.
00:22:29.540 Put your words into action and join me.
00:22:33.080 Introduce a child to a loving Heavenly Father today at Compassion.com.
00:22:38.880 That's Compassion.com.
00:22:41.880 Let's talk about another aspect of this.
00:22:43.920 There was a lot of fodder online and there was a lot of media reports
00:22:49.200 that, well, maybe America, the government would give a bailout.
00:22:53.680 We don't, you know, 80, 90 percent of the company, whatever the number was.
00:22:56.720 Ultimately, that did not happen.
00:22:58.880 Explain.
00:23:00.260 I hear bailout and I always get real cringy.
00:23:03.100 We've had some that have been really good where we've gotten our money back as taxpayers.
00:23:07.080 But in this scenario, there's many that say, you know what?
00:23:10.780 It makes me really nervous.
00:23:12.600 It did not happen.
00:23:13.820 But can you explain how the government getting involved with that and how that works and who's making that decision of saying yes or no?
00:23:21.400 Yeah, so this last week, there was considerable discussion about the Trump administration potentially bailing out Spirit Airlines.
00:23:30.240 And the bailout that was being discussed was the federal government would give Spirit Airlines $500 million.
00:23:37.180 And in exchange for that, the federal government would own 90% of the airline.
00:23:42.660 And there were differences of opinions within the administration on that.
00:23:48.340 So the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, was vocally arguing against that, saying that's a bad idea.
00:23:54.740 Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, was the one who was advocating this idea.
00:24:00.320 I publicly came out against it.
00:24:02.380 I came out loudly.
00:24:04.200 I sent a tweet a little over a week ago that said the following, quote,
00:24:09.320 This is an absolutely terrible idea.
00:24:13.940 The TARP corporate bailouts were a huge mistake.
00:24:18.340 And the government doesn't know a damn thing about running a failed budget airline that the Biden administration killed.
00:24:28.580 Now, when I said that I'm the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over aviation, when I came out against it, that got quite a bit of media attention.
00:24:38.800 And it prompted a number of other members of Congress spoke out against it after I did so.
00:24:45.680 So I will tell you, Ben, that was my public statement.
00:24:50.480 I also went – so last week I had dinner with Howard Ludnick.
00:24:55.520 Howard is a friend.
00:24:56.400 He and I work together very, very closely.
00:24:58.040 He's the secretary of commerce, and the commerce committee is the senate committee that has jurisdiction over the commerce department.
00:25:07.020 So Howard and I had dinner last week, and a good chunk of the dinner was spent discussing the potential spirit bailout.
00:25:16.680 And I will tell you, one-on-one with Howard, it was just the two of us having dinner, I leaned in really hard and said this is an absolutely horrible idea.
00:25:27.540 Corporate bailouts are a bad, bad strategy.
00:25:31.100 They were a bad strategy when we did TARP.
00:25:32.960 They're a bad strategy when you have the government coming in and bailing out giant corporations.
00:25:38.860 But they're particularly bad when the government doesn't know a damn thing about the business.
00:25:44.420 And so if we'd ended up giving $500 million to Spirit and having the federal government own 90% of Spirit, number one, I believe we would have lost our money.
00:25:55.640 In fact, I had said somewhat cynically, a better idea was simply to put $500 million in a pile on the floor, pour gasoline on it, and light it.
00:26:04.140 Because then at least you'd get some warmth.
00:26:06.400 You could like roast marshmallows by it.
00:26:07.860 That would get something positive and beneficial from it.
00:26:11.600 But fundamentally, who in their right mind thinks the federal government knows anything about how you run an airline?
00:26:21.100 How do you set pilot schedules?
00:26:22.780 How do you run baggage handling?
00:26:25.460 How do you make sure somebody's suitcase that's headed to Pittsburgh doesn't end up in Milwaukee?
00:26:31.060 How do you negotiate with pilot unions, with flight attendant unions?
00:26:35.940 How do you ensure safety?
00:26:37.840 And all of that, the federal government doesn't know a blooming thing about it.
00:26:43.500 And it is a really dangerous road.
00:26:46.900 Look, there are some voices and some voices within the administration that are pretty excited about the federal government taking ownership shares in lots and lots of companies.
00:27:00.900 I think that is a really bad idea.
00:27:05.880 And Ben, I'm going to hearken back to when I was a kid, when I was in high school.
00:27:11.000 And you may recall, I was part of a group in Houston
00:27:14.380 that was called the Constitutional Corroborators.
00:27:18.100 And it was started by this nonprofit in Houston
00:27:20.100 called the Free Enterprise Education Center.
00:27:22.900 And as high school kids, we studied free market economics.
00:27:26.640 We read Milton Friedman and Hayek and Bastiat and von Mises.
00:27:30.860 And we studied the Constitution.
00:27:32.680 And we ended up touring around Texas
00:27:34.780 speaking on the Constitution.
00:27:37.480 And it was five high school students
00:27:39.200 we would set up easels and say we'd go to like a Rotary Club or a Kiwanis Club or a Lions Club and
00:27:45.800 folks would be sitting there having lunch and the five high school students would set up easels
00:27:50.900 and we would write from memory the entire constitution in shortened demonic form
00:27:58.500 and we would write a definition of socialism which is government ownership or control
00:28:07.120 of the means of distribution or production.
00:28:10.300 And the reason we wrote this, and this is what I was doing at 14, 15 years old,
00:28:14.660 is if you don't know what it is, you can't identify it when you have it.
00:28:20.160 Well, the folks who are arguing the federal government should own or control
00:28:24.340 the means of production and distribution in an economy
00:28:28.160 are directly arguing we should adopt socialism for our economy.
00:28:33.320 That is a really, really bad answer.
00:28:36.880 And I think a budget airline made it obvious to most observers, look, there are limited circumstances.
00:28:46.100 So for example, in national security areas where you're dealing with critical minerals and rare earth minerals, where it makes sense to have some government control because you need to be able to ensure that we can defend our nation from national security threats.
00:29:01.220 But outside that very limited category, it is a really dangerous, slippery slope to start having the government be a shareholder and especially be the biggest shareholder in major companies.
00:29:15.380 That's how you lose the competitiveness.
00:29:18.160 That's how you lose the incredible success of the American for Enterprise system.
00:29:23.580 Yeah, it really is.
00:29:24.340 You know, when things like this happen, I always go back to there are real people that are affected by it.
00:29:30.040 And there's always, you know, people that are out without a job today.
00:29:33.440 There's also stories that come out of it that I think are amazing.
00:29:37.000 The New York Post had this story, and I think it's a great way to just wrap this up in a human way.
00:29:43.020 It said Spirit Airlines pilot gave an emotional send-off from rival airline after his retirement flight,
00:29:49.120 which is a huge deal when you're a pilot, was cut amid the shutdown.
00:29:53.240 The Spirit Airline pilot received a hero send-off with the help of another airline.
00:29:59.520 Captain John Jackson was scheduled to fly one last time for Spirit into Baltimore-Washington International on Saturday.
00:30:07.440 When they ceased operations and went out of business in the dead of the night, Jackson was left stranded by the permanent shutdown.
00:30:15.360 He hitched a ride with Southwest Airlines in Fort Lauderdale.
00:30:19.620 He rode alongside his son, who was a first officer, and this was the coolest part.
00:30:25.100 It went online viral.
00:30:27.540 They basically, Southwest, gave him the send-off that he deserved.
00:30:32.440 Southwest put it up on their social media.
00:30:34.980 It went to well over 100,000 people that responded to it very quickly.
00:30:40.020 They showed him in the cockpit with his son.
00:30:42.160 It was awesome, and I just got to say, even when things like this happen,
00:30:46.840 I do love seeing just the hearts of Americans and people that do this and gave him a send-off.
00:30:54.140 The Southwest Airlines carry him.
00:30:55.980 They went under the Water Canyon salute after arriving at BWI.
00:31:00.200 I tell you, it's awesome when you see things like that happen.
00:31:03.760 So to that retiring pilot who didn't get his final flight, job well done to Southwest,
00:31:08.720 and thanks for making that guy's day special.
00:31:10.900 Well, good for Southwest.
00:31:12.140 That was the right thing to do.
00:31:13.700 And I'll say Southwest is a great Texas company.
00:31:17.360 American Airlines is also a great Texas company.
00:31:20.180 You know, Texas is really a critical hub for aviation.
00:31:24.280 And I'll say I fly just about every airline all the time.
00:31:28.900 I jokingly refer to Southwest as the company plane.
00:31:32.440 You know, people ask sometimes.
00:31:34.200 They assume senators fly private jets all around.
00:31:37.540 And the vast majority of the time you fly commercial and you fly coach.
00:31:41.440 And so I tell people, I say, oh, yeah, I've got a private jet.
00:31:45.280 It's a 737, and it's with 135 of my closest friends on Southwest.
00:31:50.700 That's my private jet.
00:31:52.440 But, you know, Southwest, I think, does a great job, and that was a very class move.
00:31:57.480 I'm glad they honored the Spirit pilot who was retiring.
00:32:01.580 I'm sorry that so many other pilots are now out of a job.
00:32:05.020 I think many of them will end up getting hired by other airlines, but it's still an awful lot of pain.
00:32:10.680 and hurt from the disastrous Biden economic policies.
00:32:16.620 Yeah, it's real life.
00:32:17.900 This is going to affect people,
00:32:19.080 and I hope people pay attention to exactly what brought this
00:32:21.400 to become a reality and the disaster it ended up being.
00:32:24.500 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
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00:32:35.140 The Senate and I will see you back here on Wednesday morning.