The Viewco-hosts have condemned Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s new road trip reality TV venture amid ongoing travel chaos for Americans.
Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, announced Friday onFox Newsthat they arelaunching a YouTube series with their nine children calledThe Great American Road Tripto promote tourism in honor of the country’s 250th birthday — marking a reunion for Duffy and the producers who helped make theReal Worldseries that made him famous.
While discussing the new show onThe View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg pointed out thatTSA agents have been working without payduring the Department of Homeland Security shutdown,Spirit Airlines shuttered suddenlyandgas prices are risingdue to the war in Iran.
“But Sean was doing another reality show,” Goldberg quipped. “Tax payers pay his salary. Is this really what he should be doing?”
Panelist Ana Navarro said: “This entire government is a reality show.”
“The conflict of interest here is glaring,” she said. “I don’t know how many Americans, how many average Americans, will be able to go on a road trip when I’m paying $5.99 for a gallon of gas. It just seems that the tone deafness has no limits.”
Advertisement
Duffy said on social media that all production costs for the show are covered by a nonprofit group called The Great American Road Trip Inc. instead of taxpayers. He said he and his family did not receive salaries or production royalties from the show.
The show was sponsored by Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean and United Airlines, which has sparked criticism fromThe Viewpanelists and others due to the fact that some of those companies are groups that Duffy’s department oversees.
Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, similarly blasted the Duffys for being “out-of-touch”while many Americans are struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.
“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 wrote on X.
“How much more unfocused, unserious, and out of touch can you be?”
Campos-Duffy wrote in response on X: “All production costs were paid for by the non-profit, The Great American Road Trip, Inc. No one in my family - including my husband - were paid to do this. We did it for FREE to celebrate America 250 & encourage other Americans to get off couches & screens and spend time together seeing our country. It was filmed in small one and two day stops over the course of seven months.”
Duffy’s office did not immediately returnThe Independent’s request for comment.
Post a Comment