Hey everybody, I'm Doug Gordon and welcome to a special preview of a bonus episode of
The War on Cars.
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With Memorial Day just behind us, that means it's summer travel season, at least for US
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and his family. Secretary Duffy and his wife Rachel Campos
Duffy have been making the rounds lately to promote The Great American Road Trip,
a reality-style TV series that finds the first family of transportation behind the wheel
of a Toyota SUV on a trip across the country in celebration of the nation's 250th birthday.
But this being the Trump administration, there's a lot more to this tribute to American history
and culture than meets the eye. The project is facing immense scrutiny and criticism from
journalists and good government groups, all of whom note that the companies sponsoring
The Great American Road Trip are probably motivated by more than just patriotism.
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Henry Burke is a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project where he writes on issues
including financial regulation, corporate influence, government capacity, and economic media.
His work is published in Rolling Stone, the Boston Review, Newsweek, The Lever, and more,
and he has a new piece in the American Prospect outlining the money behind Sean Duffy's road
trip and the nearly one dozen companies that have significant business before the United
States Department of Transportation and that have sponsored the Duffy family's personal travel.
Henry Burke, welcome to the war on cars. Thanks so much for having me.
So Sean Duffy, along with his wife Rachel Campos Duffy, whom he met on MTV's Road Rules,
and some combination of his nine kids went on what they're calling the Great American road trip.
They're visiting cities, national parks, museums, and roadside attractions all across the country
as a way, as Duffy says it, to celebrate America by seeing America, to see America is to love America,
to celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary. But as you write your piece, this is not really just
a love letter to America. It's a conflict of interest packaged inside a flashy reality show.
You talk about how at one point in the trailer for this, Duffy says to his kids, you know,
someone has to pay for this operation. I got to go to work. He's made a big deal of the fact that
it took seven months and he was on some USDOT business. He would fly home. He would go out
back on the road with his family. So people might think that he's paying for this out of his pocket.
He and the family are just hopping in their car and going. But you reported that the costs were
actually picked up by a 501c4 nonprofit group. Could you talk about that nonprofit and who they
are, who's behind it? Yeah, definitely. And I can understand why people might assume that Sean
Duffy, he's a very wealthy man, might have paid for this family vacation himself. He certainly
seems to imply in the trailer. And also that's what normal people do. Normal people don't have
nonprofit groups that pay for their travel. And it's a lot more egregious when a senior
government official is having interest groups pay for their travel than normal people.
But yeah, this is all being funded by a 501c4 nonprofit group that was registered
fairly recently. So we don't actually have a whole lot of information on them other than what
they tell us. 501c4s are not required to disclose donors legally. And we don't even have their 990,
which is a disclosure form that every nonprofit has to put out. But usually it takes a couple
years after the starting of a nonprofit group for that to get kind of published. So we're aligned
just on what they're willing to tell us and what they put up on their website. But what we do know
is this nonprofit group called the Great American Road Trip, it is the same name as the reality show
that the Duffy's filmed, is led by a registered lobbyist, Tori Barnes, who has kind of business
before the Department of Transportation. She's a longtime executive at the US Travel Association.
She left a couple years ago to start her own consulting business where she lobbies on behalf
of the US Travel Association. And she appears to be the one who was organizing this for the
Duffy family and reaching out to companies that Sean Duffy regulates, asking them to pay for the
Secretary of Transportation's family vacation. Barnes, we don't know a whole lot about her,
both of her parents were actually members of Congress at one point. So she's very connected
in the Trump administration. She used to work for General Motors before she worked for the US
Travel Association. So she's very connected to the Department of Transportation, both through
General Motors, which obviously has tons of business before the DOT, given the fact that
they're a major car producer, but also the US Travel Association, which is a trade industry group
that has members, including just about every major airline in the country, tons of hotel
companies, a range of different firms from across different fields. But I think that the one that
really stands out to me at least is the airline industry. They're major donors to the US Travel
Association. So yeah, we have this 5-1-c-4. Tory Barnes is the one organizing it. And it's all
set up. It appears to fund the family vacation for the Duffees and to allow them to film a reality
show. Sean Duffy obviously has a soft spot in his heart for reality TV. I think his big breakout was
on Real World Boston. So I don't actually know. I haven't gone back and watched that. I think it's
a little bit before my time. I'm kind of curious about watching it now. But he did seem very excited
to be back on camera the past few years. He's been a Fox News host. His wife is also employed
by Fox News. And I guess he just kind of got tired of sitting in an office, doing important
bureaucratic stuff and felt the itch to get back out there and film his own reality show.
About this episode
Sean Duffy’s family road trip gets framed as patriotic fun, but the conversation digs into how the project may be a polished conflict of interest. Guest Henry Burke explains that the travel and filming were reportedly funded by a newly formed 501(c)(4) tied to lobbyist Tori Barnes, with sponsors including companies that have business before the Department of Transportation. The episode explores the overlap of reality TV, lobbying, and government influence, all wrapped in a 250th-anniversary America tour.
That's what US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and his family have done with their reality-style online series, The Great American Road Trip. The way Secretary Duffy explains it, the show is a celebration of the country's 250th birthday. Duffy has told interviewers that "To love America is to see America," so he's packed up the family SUV and hit the road.
This being the Trump administration, the trip isn't just an exercise in patriotism but a giant conflict of interest packaged as a reality TV show. That's hardly surprising given Duffy's history with reality TV—Sean Duffy met his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy while shooting MTV's Road Rules in the late 1990s—but it is concerning given that the series is sponsored by nearly a dozen companies that have business before USDOT.
Reporter Henry Burke—a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project—breaks down the many questionable and outright shady details behind Sean Duffy's trip across the country, from the opaque non-profit organizing it to the many transportation-related companies footing the bill.
