Transport Secretary Sean Duffy Took A Corporate-Sponsored Family Road Trip

Today on Forbes, Transport Secretary Sean Duffy took a corporate-sponsored family road trip. Taxpayers paid his salary the whole way. From dinner at the White House for owners of his meme coin to a $400 million jet gifted by a petro-monarchy that will be donated to his presidential library after he leaves office, Donald Trump has led the charge on extracting private gains from public office. His cabinet appears to have absorbed the lesson. Take Sean Duffy, the former Fox host turned Secretary of Transportation. On Friday, May 8th, his department dropped a trailer on YouTube unveiling the Great American Road Trip, an initiative purportedly designed as a quote guide to the historic landmarks, open roads, and small towns that tell 250 years of this country's story. But what the trailer showed was a reality show in which Duffy, his still a Fox host wife Rachel Campos-Duffy, and their nine children gallivant around America. They meet a Ben Franklin impersonator in Philadelphia, ride snowmobiles in Montana, and hang out with Kid Rock along the way. Now, as the financing has come into view, the trip looks less like civic uplift than a rolling ethics problem underwritten by companies in the transportation ecosystem Duffy oversees, and in at least one case by the department itself, which underwrote his flights as quote part of his official duties. For starters, the secretary has a taxpayer-funded job in Washington at which he's theoretically supposed to be working 5 days a week. Duffy said on Fox that the show was filmed over the course of 7 months. He's paid $203,500 annually, so that's $118,708 in taxpayer dollars paid to him while he was at least mixing work and play. Not to worry, Duffy claims. — He didn't disappear from his Senate-confirmed job to film it. He told Fox and Friends, quote, "Over the course of 7 months, we just kind of found these moments where I could do some work. I could take the kids with me, do a road trip. " He attempted to clarify on X, formerly Twitter, the following day, claiming, quote, "The series was filmed in short 1 to 2-day production windows, such as weekends and the kids' spring break. " That strains credulity. A Fox graphic accompanying the interview showed stops in Arizona, Montana, Texas, and Florida, none of which are a day's driving distance from Washington, D. C. Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Tennessee would be challenges, too. After this original story was published on forbes. com, Department of Transportation spokesperson Dana Almeida sent Forbes a list of, quote, "filming days on the road," claiming that the secretary spent just 24 days between September and May, 9 months, not 7, in production. She reasserted that the days include weekends and his children's spring break, but did not provide the exact dates. So, perhaps across multiple weekends, they flew cross-country, spent only a quick jaunt in each location, and flew back. Not exactly a family road trip, but still nothing is stopping the secretary, a multimillionaire by Forbes's estimation, from taking multiple vacations with his family on his own time and dime, right? In the glitzy trailer, Duffy even says to his kids, quote, "Someone's got to pay for this operation. I've got to go to work. " One of his daughters replies, quote, "Someone's got to pay for this operation, but we all know it's Mom. " Cue the laughter. But the Duffys didn't pay for their travel extravaganza. Instead, a supposedly independent nonprofit, a 501c4 called Great American Road Trip Inc., did. The group, oddly, doesn't appear in the Internal Revenue Services databases of tax-exempt organizations or political groups. But it appears to have been set up around last August by Tory Barnes, who, according to her LinkedIn, spent 22 years lobbying for General Motors and then the US Travel Association in DC. Now she's helping Duffy out. She didn't reply to our request for comment. Great American Road Trip Inc. got the money from huge companies overseen by the Department of Transportation. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing, carmaker Toyota, and gas giant Shell top its list of sponsors. Cruise liner Royal Caribbean Group, construction company CRH, rental car company Enterprise, and United Airlines also all made the list. That is not a quaint coalition of local motels and pie shops. It is, however, a sampling platter of companies whose fortunes run through aviation, autos, energy, infrastructure, rentals, cruise travel, and the regulatory bloodstream of American transportation. Politico reported last week that sponsorships ranged in price from $100,000 to $1 million

and that a pitch deck they obtained promised logo placements and branded activations. For full coverage, check out Kyle Chayka Mullins's piece on forbes. com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.