A Flailing President Seeks a Hellhole Airline

“We’re thinking about doing it. Helping them out, meaning bailing them out. Or buying it. I think we just buy it,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday evening. “We’d be getting it virtually debt-free. They have some good aircraft, some good assets, and when the price of oil goes down, we’d sell it for a profit. I’d love to be able to save those jobs. I’d love to be able to save an airline. I like having a lot of airlines so it’s competitive. . . . If we could get it for the right price, I’d do it.”

It’s not clear what value the government would be purchasing; when JetBlue unsuccessfully2 attempted to buy Spirit a few years ago, it said it wanted Spirit’s pilots and jets, not its business model.

Does Trump know he wouldn’t be able to keep the jets—with their non-reclinable seats with minimal legroom? Maybe?

His motivation, instead, appears