Transportation

Buttigieg blasts Duffy’s ‘Great American Road Trip’ as ’embarrassment’

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by Tara Suter - 05/17/26 6:32 PM ET

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by Tara Suter - 05/17/26 6:32 PM ET

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Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (D) on Sunday went after the current secretary of the department, Sean Duffy, over a reality show he filmed.

“I love road trips. I love America. I actually took a taxpayer-funded road trip lasting about seven months. It was in Afghanistan. This is something very different,” Buttigieg told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

“This is not about patriotism. And it is an embarrassment to have him going around saying that a road trip — quote — ‘fits any budget’ at a time when more and more Americans cannot afford a road trip, because of the explosion in diesel prices and gas prices caused directly by the Iran war and by the Trump administration,” he added.

“To make road trips unaffordable and then go around celebrating your own road trip is exactly what people are so frustrated about, and part of why the Duffy road trip scandal has been such an embarrassment to the Trump administration is, it’s happening at the same moment that Trump is alienating voters by making it clear that he doesn’t care.”

Last week, Duffy’s wife said that her husband is not a “corrupt man” in the wake of a watchdog group pushing for the inspector general to investigate her and her husband’s reality series, “The Great American Road Trip.”

“I don’t think anybody can accuse my husband of not having done his job well. In fact, people have been remarkably happy with it,” Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy said during a radio appearance.

“And my husband is not a corrupt man. He’s had many years in politics, and nobody has ever accused my husband of that. And he certainly would not take favor with anybody because they contributed to an America 250 project, which is about celebrating America,” she added.

Campos-Duffy’s comments come after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s effort to investigate her husband as well as the show’s possible sponsorship from Toyota, United Airlines, Boeing and other members of the transportation industry that face regulation from the Transportation Department.

The Hill has reached out to the Transportation Department for comment.

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