Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, hauled his family into a van for a wholesome, seven-month trek across the nation, which was filmed for an upcoming reality TV program, he told Fox News on Friday.
The revelation drew immediate blowback as “tone-deaf”, from critics who pointed toward various crises that have recently hammered the country’s transportation sector.
Between February and April, a partial government shutdown – stemming from a protracted debate about funding for the Department of Homeland Security – led TSA agents to quit in droves over the lack of pay. Some airport travelers faced long wait times due to the ensuing staffing shortages.
Then, in April, at New York City’s LaGuardia airport, an Air Canada jet collided with a fire truck, resulting in the death of two pilots. The circumstances around the incident remain under federal investigation.
Meanwhile, dominating headlines as of late has been the spike in gas and jet fuel prices, while the US-Israel war with Iran continues to disrupt the oil industry. That rise in cost contributed, among other factors, to the collapse of low-budget carrier Spirit Airlines.
“I wanted to lean into America’s 250th birthday,” Duffy said on Fox News, after a preview of The Great American Road Trip played.
“Over the course of seven months, we just kind of found these moments where I might do some work. I could take the kids with me … Our motto was ‘to love America is to see America.’”
He exhorted the public to embark on similar road trips, suggesting it as an alternative for kids accustomed to scrolling through social media.
The husband of Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary under Joe Biden, took Duffy to task on social media over the segment.
“The same Duffys who threw endless fits on national television when Pete was working from our son’s ICU bedside are now bragging about their multi-month, taxpayer-funded family road trip while gas and grocery prices soar for American families because of Trump’s war of choice,” Chasten Buttigieg wrote in an X post.
“How much more unfocused, unserious, and out of touch can you be?”
Rachel Campos-Duffy, Duffy’s wife, issued a social media rebuttal, saying that production costs were paid for by a non-profit, The Great American Road Trip Inc. “It was filmed in small one and two day stops over the course of seven months,” she also wrote.
The trip has also drawn ethics concerns over its sponsors, among which include Boeing. The aerospace company has been subject to several investigations concerning the safety of its aircrafts.
