CNN panelist slams Sean Duffy's corporate-sponsored reality show as 'gross'
Key Takeaways
- •Episodes of Great American Road Trip reportedly drew as few as 400 pageviews.
- •Boeing and Toyota have each admitted spending $1 million on the series.
- •The sponsor list also includes Royal Caribbean Group, United Airlines and Lyft.
- •Senator Patty Murray has asked the Transportation Department inspector general to review the road trip, and CREW has filed an ethics complaint.
- •The Transportation Department says taxpayer money did not fund the series.
A much-anticipated but minimally viewed reality series starring a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, drew a scathing review on CNN Thursday morning.
Episodes of Duffy's "Great American Road Trip" (video) — sponsored by corporations the Transportation Department regulates that have acknowledged spending millions on the project — received as few as 400 pageviews and a one-word critique from CNN panelist Meghan Hays, a Democratic strategist.
"Gross," Hays declared. "It's corrupt, it's gross."
Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin and onetime reality television personality who first became known on MTV's "The Real World," has faced mounting criticism from senators, watchdogs and the media over an executive branch official receiving gifts of hotel stays, flights and ski trips from corporations his policies impact. Federal ethics rules generally bar executive branch employees from accepting gifts from "prohibited sources," which include companies regulated by their agencies, and that standard sits at the center of the complaints against him. Senator Patty Murray has called for the Transportation Department's inspector general to investigate the corporate-sponsored road trip, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed an ethics complaint against the secretary.
What comes next depends on whether the department's inspector general opens a review in response to Murray's request, and how the ethics process resolves the complaint CREW filed.
Both Boeing and Toyota have admitted spending $1 million on the Transportation secretary's series, according to the Wall Street Journal, and a sponsor list also includes Royal Caribbean Group, United Airlines and Lyft.
While the money was run through a nonprofit, and the Transportation Department denies that taxpayer money funded the series, Hays argued the arrangement was still inappropriate.
As proof, she pointed to a controversial clip in which Duffy tells his daughter he doesn't want her to go to Harvard — and noted that his son-in-law, Michael Alfonso, is running for Congress in Wisconsin.
"It's highlighting them," Hays said. "This is about the Duffy family elevating themselves, let's be clear, on the backs of companies in America who want better regulations for themselves."
