Former Real World Star Sean Duffy Ominously Accepts NASA Side Hustle: “Time To Take Over Space”

Donald Trump has another job for Sean Duffy, the Real World personality turned congressman turned Fox News pundit turned transportation secretary: interim administrator of NASA. “He will be a fantastic leader,” the president said in announcing the appointment, praising Duffy for doing a “TREMENDOUS” job at Transportation.

“Honored to accept this mission,” Duffy posted after the announcement. “Time to take over space.”

Duffy—whose early tenure has coincided with several air traffic crises, including the tragic mid-air collision in DC on his first full day on the job—is now one of at least three Trump administration officials to hold multiple jobs at once. As Semafor’s Elana Schor notes, he joins trade representative Jamieson Greer—who moonlights as the acting head of the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of the Special Counsel—and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—also the acting national security adviser and acting archivist of the United States—in multitasking for Trump. (Rubio also led the United States Agency for International Development until shuttering it this month, a move that a Lancet analysis found could contribute to 14 million deaths in the next five years.)

The appointment comes with the space agency’s future in question, as more than 2,000 employees are expected to be pushed out in the administration’s government purge and steep cuts proposed for its budget. Which isn’t to say Trump—who also established Space Force as the sixth branch of the US military during his first term—is necessarily abandoning his space ambitions, which include “launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” as he put it in his second inaugural address. Instead, the weakening of NASA would likely mean the further privatization of space exploration, with the government outsourcing more of its operations to companies like SpaceX—the one that already boasts about $22 billion in federal contracts and is owned by Trump’s former top adviser and political donor, Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency led the administration’s firing spree.

Of course, Musk and Trump have had a bit of a falling out of late, as you may have heard. At odds over the so-called “big, beautiful bill” the president signed into law last week, Musk has highlighted Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein and announced the establishment of a new political party, while Trump has threatened to deport Musk and torpedo his lucrative government contracts. “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump said of his former “first buddy” recently.

That could open the door to Musk’s chief rival in the billionaire space race: Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin appears to be making a play for Trump’s attention (and for SpaceX’s contracts for rocket launches and space operations). As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp have had numerous contacts with Trump and his White House in recent weeks, with Bezos even inviting the president to his Venice wedding.

Trump didn’t join his daughter, Ivanka, and the various other rich and famous figures at Bezos’s big matrimonial bash. But his appointment of Duffy to lead NASA would seem—if not necessarily a gift to Bezos—another blow to Musk. Not only was Musk’s billionaire friend, Jared Isaacman, passed over for the role; Duffy isn’t exactly seen as an ally to the former DOGE chief, having reportedly gotten into a heated Cabinet Room argument with Musk over slash-and-burn cuts his team was working on at the Federal Aviation Administration—amid a series of high-profile plane crashes.

It remains to be seen how long Trump will keep Duffy in the post; in announcing the new gig, Trump suggested it could be “only for a short period of time.” In any case, Duffy—who, like Trump, used reality television as a springboard to power—welcomed the new responsibility. “Let’s launch,” he wrote.