{"id":821970,"date":"2026-08-22T10:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/821970\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T10:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:02:14","slug":"sean-duffys-family-road-trip-reality-series-we-watched-it-will-anyone-else-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/821970\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Duffy\u2019s family road-trip reality series: we watched it \u2013 will anyone else? | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

It would be fair to say that the Trump administration\u2019s celebration of the United States\u2019s 250th birthday has been unorthodox \u2013 involving, as it has, an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event at the White House, a poorly attended state fair, and a car race<\/a> through Washington, before which the US president will take a lap of honor.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, however, Donald Trump<\/a> officials dropped perhaps their weirdest 250th offering yet: a six-part travel show in which the US secretary of transportation take his entire family on a startlingly self-involved, creatively funded road trip around the country.<\/p>\n

Billed as a way to \u201ccelebrate and share America\u2019s story\u201d and \u201cunderstand the vast, beautiful, complicated place we call home\u201d, The Great American Road Trip \u2013 which sits on the Department of Transportation\u2019s YouTube page \u2013 does neither, instead serving as an apparent government-commissioned audition for Sean Duffy (a former star of MTV\u2019s The Real World: Boston) to return to reality TV, this time alongside his family.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear almost immediately that this is a show about Duffy, his wife \u2013 the Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy \u2013 and their admittedly very pleasant children, rather than American tourist spots. We theoretically visit and learn about the Liberty Bell, the Grand Canyon and Wyoming, but we learn much more about Sean and Rachel, as they introduce their nine children, tell the story of how they met and, in one particularly gratuitous scene, renew their marriage vows.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange show, stretched over almost three hours, which repeatedly raises the question: who is this for? The target audience must surely fit into an unusual venn diagram of people who like America and really, really like the Duffy family.<\/p>\n

The start of The Great American Road Trip sees the Duffy brood gather in Washington, where they visit the Oval Office and are waved off by Trump, appearing here in a brief cameo.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaking a little trip?\u201d the president asks the family. One of them tells him yes. \u201cA little trip all over,\u201d the president replies, demonstrating a strong understanding of what a road trip involves.<\/p>\n

\u201cValentina, does the president have pretty hair?\u201d one of the Duffy\u2019s daughters subsequently asks her younger sister. \u201cYeah,\u201d the younger one says.<\/p>\n

With Trump out of the way, we\u2019re into the meat of this thing, which is a mix between a glossily produced travelogue and pitch for Meet the Duffys, a reality show coming to a niche streaming service near you \u2013 with a heavy lean towards the latter.<\/p>\n

While the first episode is apparently focused on Philadelphia, most information about the city is swapped out for what is basically half an hour of getting to know the Duffys. It\u2019s a constant trade-off: for every titbit about whatever tourist attraction the Duffys visit, we have to listen to more information about their family.<\/p>\n

So it is that we learn that the Liberty Bell cracked on its \u201ctest ring\u201d, and that the Duffys\u2019 son isn\u2019t enjoying college.<\/p>\n

We discover that signatories to the Declaration of Independence risked being executed, and that one of the Duffys\u2019 daughters is \u201ca bit of a free spirit\u201d. (The producers illustrate this by showing photographs of the daughter sticking her tongue out at the camera.)<\/p>\n

We get to look at a chair where George Washington presided over debates about the constitution, and learn that \u2013 wouldn\u2019t you know it? \u2013 Sean and Rachel are former reality TV show participants, having met on Road Rules: All Stars, which aired in 1998.<\/p>\n

This is all interspersed with shots of the Duffys praying before meals and before bed, footage which serves no purpose other than to show any watching TV executives that the Duffys can appeal to a religious crowd.<\/p>\n

The Great American Road Trip was supposed to have aired in June, but has been held up amid questions about the ethics of the project. The government insists no taxpayer money was spent to create the show, but the fact it is sponsored by companies including Boeing and Toyota \u2013 who are regulated by the Department of Transport \u2013 prompted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) to file a complaint<\/a> with the department\u2019s office of inspector general in May.<\/p>\n

There have been further questions about the Duffys taking a road trip at a time when gas prices are sky high: Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic former transportation secretary, described<\/a> the project as \u201cbrutally out of touch\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the show, at least, the Duffys aren\u2019t bothered about any of that, with their focus instead drawn to inserting themselves into famous American landscapes. Take episode three \u2013 Wyoming and Montana: Winter in the Wild \u2013 where Sean Duffy crowbars his family into a rather on-the-nose observation about the herding patterns of wild animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese buffalo congregate together. They are more powerful as a group,\u201d Duffy tells his daughters, as he points at some wildlife. \u201cThere\u2019s a message here. The buffalo and the Duffy family are more powerful together.\u201d<\/p>\n

A tour guide called Roy, who has been standing to the side of the shot, coughs awkwardly and tells Duffy that, actually, these aren\u2019t buffalo at all: they are bison. \u201cSee, y\u2019all learned something,\u201d an unfazed Duffy tells his family.<\/p>\n

In the first quarter of the final episode<\/a> \u2013 titled Arizona: Family, Memories and the Road Ahead \u2013 we learn precisely nothing about Arizona. But we do find out that it\u2019s the Duffys\u2019 27th wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n

That prompts some unsolicited, and surely unhelpful, relationship advice from Campos-Duffy. \u201cThe key to a good, long lasting [music] marriage is to marry somebody very good-looking that you\u2019re attracted to, because marriage involves a lot of forgiveness, and it\u2019s easier to forgive someone when you\u2019re very attracted to them,\u201d she says, before her husband takes the kids to a hub for Waymo, the self-driving taxi company.<\/p>\n

Is a visit to Waymo really going to excite teenage children? Is it something that the viewer will find interesting? Is it an essential part of a cross country road trip? No, no and no, but Waymo is one of the sponsors of the road trip, so off we go.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the future of transportation,\u201d Duffy tells the kids, as they pull up to the facility. He makes no mention of Waymo\u2019s recent travails, which include one of its vehicles blocking an ambulance<\/a> from reaching a mass shooting in Austin in March (the Waymo was picking up a passenger), and dozens of its cars having to be manually retrieved last year after a blackout in San Francisco<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By this point we\u2019re nine minutes into the episode, and we\u2019ve seen precious little of Arizona. We\u2019re unlikely to any time soon because next, the Duffys take us to the chapel where they got married.<\/p>\n

By this point, it\u2019s clear the show is a lesson in self-obsession, but what follows is still astonishing. The Duffys announce they\u2019re going to renew their wedding vows.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s here that the Great American Road Trip really jumps the shark. The stated purpose of this series<\/a> was to \u201chighlight everything from civics lessons about America\u2019s founding to iconic national parks and thriving small-town communities\u201d. The blurb<\/a> on the road trip\u2019s snazzy website promises a \u201cguide to the historic landmarks, open roads, and small towns that tell 250 years of this country\u2019s story\u201d.<\/p>\n

Instead, we\u2019re watching two people we don\u2019t know renew their wedding vows in a six-part video series commissioned by the US government.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love this experience, because on this American birthday, we saw the country, and we did it together \u2013 which, as a dad, makes me proud,\u201d Duffy tells the camera at the end.<\/p>\n

At least someone enjoyed it. But for those less smitten with the secretary of transportation and his family, it\u2019s hard to understand how this celebrates 250 years of the US \u2013 or anything, really, other than the Duffys themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would be fair to say that the Trump administration\u2019s celebration of the United States\u2019s 250th birthday has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-821970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}