Since it was unveiled last weekend, the trailer for “The Great American Road Trip,” the five-part reality TV show starring the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, his wife and their nine kids, has driven an unexpected amount of attention his way.
The series, meant to encourage Americans to get in the car and see the country in celebration of America’s 250th, has become a target for unhappiness over rising gas prices. (“Brutally out of touch,” the former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg decreed on X) and the subject of a debate about departmental ethics.
It is also the latest example of what is starting to look a lot like a trend toward celluloid self-branding by Trump officials and family members.
After the ad campaign starring Kristi Noem during her term as secretary of homeland security, which featured her as a cowgirl at Mount Rushmore, and after “Melania,” the documentary by the first lady that chronicled her preparations for her husband’s second inauguration in exhaustive decorative detail, it was probably only a matter of time before other Trump figures seized the chance to package themselves for posterity.
It makes sense, after all: This is a president who created and honed his image via TV. Little wonder those around him are trying to do the same via their own spinoffs. Why not a cabinet member whose résumé includes “The Real World” and who was a Fox News contributor and a Fox Business host?
The new series is created by a nonprofit called The Great American Road Trip, founded last year by Tori Barnes, a former lobbyist and executive for the U.S. Travel Association, and supported by sponsors that include Boeing and Google. Though Barnes did not respond directly to questions about who came up with the series, she did say in an email to The New York Times that the “organization invited the secretary and his family to join us to increase visibility and to help inspire Americans to get out and see America.”
According to an X post by Duffy in response to the criticism (which he blamed on “the radical, miserable left”), the series was shot over a period of seven months, on weekends and on his children’s spring vacations.
This is not the first video appearance by Duffy in his role as cabinet secretary; he also recently headlined a P.S.A. urging travelers to dress up for the airport in order to encourage civility. “The golden age of travel starts with you,” he announced, standing in a busy terminal dressed to make the point in a neatly tailored suit, glossy tie and natty pocket handkerchief.
That spot did not go over well with many fliers, who voiced their disagreement on social media (it’s unclear that getting gussied up would solve the upset caused by delayed flights, increasingly tiny seats and other flying indignities). But it was merely a warm-up for the longer show, which has its debut next month on YouTube. This one features Duffy in a whole variety of dad outfits straight from the “Father Knows Best” closet of the American mind, with his family as supporting characters, down to their matching PJs.
There he is in the Oval Office, introducing his kids (and the show’s concept) to President Trump as white-collar dad in a Trumpian outfit of blue suit, white shirt and red-and-blue tie. There he is in snowy Montana, leading his gang on snowmobiles in coordinated snowsuits. In Philadelphia, he’s in a polo shirt and jeans, introducing his children to a role-playing Benjamin Franklin. He hangs out in a plaid shirt with Kid Rock, a scene that also features Duffy’s wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, a Fox anchor, in an American flag sweater and matching American flag cowboy boots. (The two met on the reality show “Road Rules: All Stars.”) He wears a lot of shackets. And that’s just in the show’s four-minute promo.
In other words, this does not seem to be in the mode of the storied road trips of American pop-culture mythology, be they the grungy road trip of Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson in “Easy Rider” or the existential one of Chloé Zhao’s Oscar winner “Nomadland.” It does not even seem to be modeled on the gaffe-filled comic road trip of the Griswold clan in “National Lampoon’s Vacation.”
It’s more like “Road Trip: The Suburban Nostalgia Version.” (See the cars, which include throwback station wagons redolent of “Leave It to Beaver” and a big, black Toyota SUV with Duffy, of course, in the driver’s seat.) It was conceived, presumably, to evoke the values — “wholesome,” “patriotic,” “joyful” — enumerated by Duffy in his post on X and meant to define the show and, by association, himself.
As such, it effectively brands him as the Everydad of the administration, complete with ur-weekend wardrobe. And when it finally airs next month, it may turn out to be less about actual reality (reality TV rarely is) than about heavily messaged reality. In other words: marketing for history.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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