PREVIEW: Sean Duffy's Great American Road Grift
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, presale tickets to live shows, and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars.
See the USA in your... Toyota?
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.
Our bestselling new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, published by Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House, is available wherever books are sold.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody. I'm Doug Gordon and welcome to a special preview of a bonus episode of The War on Cars. |
| 0:16.0 | This one is available just for Patreon supporters. So if you want to sign up, go to patreon.com |
| 0:23.3 | slash the war on cars pod. |
| 0:26.4 | With Memorial Day just behind us, that means it's summer travel season, at least for |
| 0:31.4 | U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy and his family. |
| 0:36.2 | Secretary Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos Duffy, have been making |
| 0:39.3 | the rounds lately to promote the Great American Road Trip, a reality-style TV series that |
| 0:45.6 | finds the first family of transportation behind the wheel of a Toyota SUV on a trip across the |
| 0:51.7 | country in celebration of the nation's 250th birthday. |
| 0:56.4 | But this being the Trump administration, there's a lot more to this tribute to American |
| 1:00.8 | history and culture than meets the eye. |
| 1:03.4 | The project is facing immense scrutiny and criticism from journalists and good government |
| 1:08.0 | groups, all of whom note that the company sponsoring the Great |
| 1:11.4 | American Road Trip are probably motivated by more than just patriotism. You can listen to the entire |
| 1:18.0 | thing if you sign up to become a Patreon supporter of the podcast. Just go to patreon.com |
| 1:23.4 | slash the War on Cars Pod and join today. You can support us for just $3 per month and annual |
| 1:29.7 | subscriptions are available. And if you join us before the end of May, you can save 20% off |
| 1:35.9 | your first month or the entire year by using code Bike Month at checkout. A lot of folks ask |
| 1:42.9 | me and Sarah, is this your full-time job? |
| 1:46.4 | Is the war on cars and the book and the podcasts and everything you do around it? Is that what |
| 1:51.3 | you do with your days? Is that how you make a living? And the honest truth is, yes, it is. |
| 1:57.2 | We could not keep doing it at the level we want to do it without making it our full-time gigs, |
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