With summer drawing to a close and kids returning to school across the country, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy released his long-delayed “Great American Road Trip” YouTube reality series. The show is arriving a bit too late for Duffy’s stated goal: “encouraging everyone to go take a road trip to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.” But it did give the former reality TV personality and his family an all-expenses-paid vacation courtesy of many companies his department regulates.
The show is less a public service announcement and more an ethical morass filled with potential conflicts of interest. Just look at some of the great vacation destinations the Duffy clan visited on its trip.
What trip is complete without taking the kids for test rides in Waymos, whose self-driving cars depend on regulation decisions by Duffy and his agency?
What family hasn’t spent its summer vacation touring a Boeing plant in South Carolina? Probably one whose road trips aren’t turned into a show sponsored by Boeing and who doesn’t oversee a federal agency that has ongoing investigations into the company. And what trip is complete without taking the kids for test rides in Waymos, whose self-driving cars depend on regulation decisions by Duffy and his agency?
The episodes include many shots of the Duffys driving around in a famously not-American Toyota, showing off the logo repeatedly. Why not use an American car? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Toyota is one of the sponsors of the video series — and has paid millions in fines to Duffy’s agency over the past few years.
And while Duffy and his family filmed their road trip last year, the Transportation Department reversed measures that helped compensate travelers for airline delays and cancellations. One beneficiary? United Airlines, a trip sponsor.
Earlier this year, Politico published a presentation from Great American Road Show Inc., the Delaware-registered nonprofit that paid for the Duffy family’s gas, car rentals, lodging and activities during the eight months of on-and-off filming. The pitch deck offered companies sponsorship tiers ranging from “Bronze” ($100,000) to “Platinum” ($1 million). In some cases, these sponsorships were a drop in the bucket: The show’s sponsors reportedly spent more than $100 million lobbying the federal government in 2025 alone.
Considering that each episode features a disclaimer letting viewers know that the show was paid for “through the generous support of sponsors” and “accepted as a gift by the Department,” it’s hard to imagine what ethics officials spent months taking out of it.
Companies don’t spend millions out of the goodness of their heart. Is it more likely that these companies really care about Americans’ vacation plans or that they’re just using this as an opportunity to lobby Duffy and the Transportation Department?
Now, some of the administration’s defenders may ask, what’s the big deal? Sure, the secretary went across the country on an extended summer vacation, but it’s not like taxpayers are on the hook. First of all, when this administration makes such claims, the public often ends up footing the bill anyway. But more importantly, that excuse does nothing to address the harm of conflicts from industries paying for it.
If you listen to Duffy tell it, there’s nothing to worry about ethically about his trip. He says the department’s ethics officers cleared the project. In fact, the whole reason that this video series, whose purpose was to inspire Americans to hit the road this summer, is coming out at summer’s end is, as Duffy said, to “make sure I come into compliance with all of the ethics rules now that we have in government.”
Considering that each episode features a disclaimer letting viewers know that the show was paid for “through the generous support of sponsors” and “accepted as a gift by the Department,” it’s hard to imagine what ethics officials spent months taking out of it. But that’s just another reason why the Department of Transportation inspector general needs to investigate the series and its sponsorships. Because when a Cabinet official receives millions in gifts from major corporations, the American people end up paying.
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