President-elect Donald Trump will nominate former Congressman and current Fox personality Sean Duffy as Secretary of Transportation.
Duffy is married to Rachel Campos-Duffy, co-host with Pete Hegseth of Fox’s Fox & Friends Weekend whom Trump announced he would nominate as Secretary of Defense. Both Duffy and Campos-Duffy appeared in different seasons of The Real World, and met while filming Road Rules: All Stars (1998).
His focus in Congress has been on financial services policy, and also chaired the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee in the House. I haven’t seen him among the more prominent voices in the Republican Party on transportation issues.
As a commentator, he suggested this year that the Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 incident where the aircraft lost a door plug could have been the result of the planemaker’s DEI initatives, and used the Southwest Airlines Christmas 2022 meltdown to criticize the Biden administration and in particular Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s handling of consumer complaints.
That said, he strikes me as a mainstream conservative-turned-pundit likely to be more amenable than the previous administration to airline partnerships and mergers, and more skeptical towards regulation. That was certainly not a foregone conclusion, and the Republican Party overall has become more hostile to business over the past decade and more inclined towards populism and a willingness to revisit past opposition to anti-trust.
Betting markets had House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chair Sam Graves as favorite for the position. Graves was term-limited out of that position, and expected to move to another role (though it’s possible he seeks and receives a waiver.) Behind that Graves was a secondary pick, Garret Graves (no relation), a member of the House who was redistricted out of his seat and who chaired the Aviation Subcommittee of the transportation committee. Both were considered ‘normal’ Republicans in terms of policy.
I didn’t have Duffy on my bingo card for Transportation. I thought he was quite good as an outspoken conservative congressman, less so as part of the cast of the Real World‘s season six (Boston). A banking and finance role would not have surprised me. And that’s why this was the most likely pick of all – see also, ‘the funniest outcome is always the most likely’.
Gary, must we degrade every pick by the mandate of the American people? You’re still obese, you’re still ugly, and you’re still a loser.
Being sassy won’t change that.
The bar is very low. He will be at least as good as [redacted] and the man who thinks he’s a woman, Mr Rachel Levine, the Asst Secretary of Health of the DHHS.
Of course he’s not remotely qualified; but at least he hasn’t been formally charged with a crime (as of this writing), which is a plus. Being an original Tea Party member from Boston is… original.
“I haven’t seen him among the more prominent voices in the Republican Party on transportation issues.”
That all of a sudden matters, when we have the current abomination as Secretary? Hahahahaha
WI-7: land of chronic embarrassment.
Gary….but you think mayor [redacted] WAS qualified? You’re going to have a rough 4 years.
Do yourself a favor:
Find a good therapist or pick up drinking.
@Chris – where did I say anything in this post evaluating the tenure of Secretary Buttigieg? (In fact, I’ve been highly critical of his tenure.)
@toomanybooks – My question was, what can we glean about him from his record in terms of how he’d act as Transportation Secretary? So yes, his record on such issues and past comments are highly relevant to the question at hand.
Gary is not STILL obese. He dropped many pounds.
…and the clown show continues…
Reality stars should not be a surprise. High profile individuals fit the next administration’s requirements. Buttigieg did a great job ( my opinion) so everyone can continue to hold their own beer and relax.
Someday…maybe…probably not…you’ll all realize that the reality TV guy who lies like a rug and failed at running casino hotels (6x bankrupt btw) for f sakes is not going to be your savior. The rest of us…we can only hope this will be the final straw before we can return to good people who want to do a good job. We can only pray…
And people thought Idiocracy was satire when it’s really a preview of the next four years. Let’s see if the plan to nominate so many stunningly inept people to high level positions that the senate will have to let some of them through ends up succeeding. You may not like the current cabinet but at least they’re all sane and understand their jobs.
Yeah, Gary went from looking like a thumb to looking like a woman. He’s still morbidly obese. There are women longing for h00ters the size of his.