Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump's grifting is so big and so in-your-face that it tends to suck all the oxygen out of the air so mini-grifters don't get as much attention as they should. Case in point: Sean Duffy, a former Fox News host and now secretary of transportation. After all, he knows how to drive a car and a car is transportation, so he is clearly qualified.
Duffy said that promoting summer road trips as a civic experience is part of his job. He collected some money, got in his car and drove around the country in several short trips from September to April. Most of those months are not in the summer, according to the staff calendarist. He is going to make a YouTube series about his travels and post it in June.
So what's the deal here—other than Duffy not realizing that when Kristi Noem made herself the face of her department and upstaged Trump, she got canned for it? The problem is the funding. Duffy created a nonprofit company, The Great American Road Trip, Inc., and began selling sponsorships for his trip. After all, gas is expensive and you can't expect a lowly cabinet official making only $246,400 to pay for his own travel. Besides, cars suitable for himself, his wife and their nine children don't get great mileage.
So, Duffy created four levels of sponsorship for his company. Platinum went for $1 million, gold went for $500,000, silver went for $250,000, and bronze went for $100,000. Duffy conveniently made up a pitch deck to show to companies that have business before his department and would like favorable treatment. Unfortunately, the deck leaked out and Politico published it yesterday. Here it is.
Were there companies in the transportation business who were interested? In the immor(t)al words of Sarah Palin: "You betcha."" Here is a partial list of "sponsors":
There were no doubt other sponsors who preferred to keep mum. Bunim/Murray Productions produced the videos but when asked, declined to say what the budget was. Did the sponsorships cover the production costs? Who knows? What happened with the excess money, if any? Duffy isn't talking.
Duffy may be an amateur when it comes to running anything, but he knows how Washington works. After being a prosecutor and then serving four terms in Congress, he became a lobbyist for the airlines. Oh, and in Aug. 2021 he bought a home in New Jersey and claimed it as his principal residence on his mortgage application. In Feb. 2025, he bought a home in D.C. and claimed IT as his principal residence on his mortgage application. This is precisely the "crime" the DoJ used to go after New York AG Letitia James.
On Tuesday, Duffy testified before Congress about the "road trip." The senators were not all pleased. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said "I don't like the fact that this 'Great American [Road Trip]' reality TV show took days and days of filming. I don't like the fact that it was paid for by companies that you have to oversee, companies that you work with, and in our jobs that would be pay for play. It would be 100 percent illegal. It would be inappropriate on every level and not tolerated." Duffy responded: "Do you have jurisdiction over law firms? So, you received $7 million in political contributions from the trial bar." They ended up yelling at each other. For the record, Gillibrand is on the Armed Services, Appropriations, and Intelligence Committees, none of which have jurisdictions over law firms. But even if she were on a committee with jurisdiction over law firms, the core of his argument is "Politicians are corrupt so it is perfectly acceptable for Cabinet members to be corrupt, too." Only Cabinet members don't need to run for reelection. (V)