‘The Real World’ Alum and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Slammed for ‘Tone Deaf’ Reality Show Plans
The Real World alum Sean Duffy is making a return to TV.
The 54-year-old Transportation Secretary will star in The Great American Road Trip. The five-part series chronicles his journey across the U.S. with his wife and kids.
Sean Duffy and his family star in ‘The Great American Road Trip’
The Great American Road Trip aims to encourage tourism in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary.
“The motto is: to love America is to see America,” Duffy says in the trailer for the show, which will stream on YouTube. “It’s one of the most powerful ways to understand this vast, beautiful, complicated place we call home.”
Duffy is no stranger to filming his travels for TV. In 1998, he starred in MTV’s Road Rules: All-Stars. The show – which was rebranded as The Challenge in later seasons – brought together past cast members from The Real World and challenged them to complete various tasks with the goal of winning a substantial prize.
Duffy, who appeared on The Real World: Boston, met his wife, The Real World: San Francisco alum Rachel Campos, on the show. They married in 1999 and went on to have nine children.
“The Great American Road Trip will inspire families to step away from the noise, hit the open road, and reconnect with what matters most: each other,” says Campos-Duffy in the trailer, which also features appearances from Donald Trump and Kid Rock. The show does not yet have a premiere date.
‘The Real World’ alum faces backlash for new reality show
The announcement of the new show was met with swift backlash in many quarters. Commenters on YouTube pointed out that high gas prices thanks to the war in Iran mean that fueling up the car for a road trip has become prohibitively expensive for many. Meanwhile, problems with the TSA and the demise of low-cost airline Spirit mean flying is also costly. Others have questioned the ethics of the show, whose sponsors include Toyota, Boeing, and United Airlines – all companies regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“I don’t know how many Americans, average Americans, are going to have the chance to go on a road trip when I am paying $5.99 in downtown Miami for a gallon of gas,” said The View’s Ana Navarro. “It just seems that the tone-deafness has no limits.”
The Duffys are “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, the husband of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, wrote on X.
“How much more unfocused, unserious, and out of touch can you be?” he added.
Campos-Duffy replied to Buttigieg’s post, saying she and her family were not paid for The Great American Road Trip.
In a post on his X account, Duffy accused the “radical left” of hating his family’s road trip because it was “too wholesome” and “too patriotic.”
“They’re upset because they don’t want you to celebrate America!” he claimed. “And they definitely don’t want you to teach your kids civics & patriotism.”
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