President Trump’s top employees are meeting expectations, unfortunately | Editorial

Sean Duffy and Rachel Campos-Duffy, a couple of reality show veterans, have put together a new production starring themselves, their nine children, and some of their corporate sponsors. A trailer for The Great American Road Trip captures them visiting places like Philadelphia, where nary a touristy cliché — from the “Rocky steps” to the Liberty Bell to Pat’s and Geno’s — goes undisturbed by the clan. Their ostensible goal is to promote American tourism; their obvious one is to promote the Duffys.

All of this would be unremarkable, in addition to unnecessary, if not for Duffy’s day job as a cabinet member. Given that he is President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, the forthcoming YouTube series raises questions such as: How did Duffy find time to make a whole show about his family despite his considerable official duties? Should he have publicly indulged in the sort of gas and other expenses his administration has helped make prohibitive for many Americans? And why did he accept funding for the endeavor from corporations he regulates?

Duffy isn’t the only ranking administration official inviting scrutiny.

After a year in which Trump largely avoided the unprecedented turnover among senior staff that plagued his first term, he is reverting to his own reality TV roots by grappling with a series of firing offenses in the regime’s upper echelons. Considering Trump hired most of his lieutenants — and the Senate rubber-stamped them — based on qualifications that have little to do with their jobs, these are predictable consequences.

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Within the space of a month starting in late March, Trump ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, or 20% of his cabinet. More recent events suggest he is not done.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary found himself on the menu last week. A surgeon and researcher, Makary became famous enough for the administration by appearing on right-wing outlets to take dubious positions on the COVID-19 pandemic, as he has in office. But his scientific training seemed to prevail on issues such as the safety of a widely used abortion drug and the risks of flavored e-cigarettes, on which he resisted demands from the right and Trump. That made him enemies across the spectrum, as he struggled to run an agency hollowed out by Elon Musk’s mass layoffs.

FBI Director Kash Patel makes a strong case for following Makary. Having spent a remarkable portion of his tenure live-tweeting inaccuracies about ongoing investigations and using taxpayer money to pay for his personal peregrinations around the nation and globe, Patel is now contending with reports in the Atlantic that he is prone to excessive drinking and bespoke bourbon giveaways — not the sort of thing one hears about predecessors such as Jim Comey or Bob Mueller. This week, the director responded to congressional questioning about his reported carousing, which he has denied, by leveling baseless allegations against the senator quizzing him, demonstrating skills he honed as a right-wing media fixture.

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Duffy, the transportation secretary, is getting hard questions, too. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general to look into whether the secretary broke federal rules by allowing his production to be underwritten by companies such as United Airlines, Boeing, and Toyota. A document obtained by Politico shows various promotional considerations being offered to “partners” of the show in exchange for contributions of up to $1 million.

The group also questions the use of public resources on the show, which was produced over a seven-month span when Duffy’s department was supposed to be contending with aviation accidents, a shutdown gutting airport staffing, and fuel prices inflated by Trump’s Iran war. A spokesperson for the secretary wanly asserted that during his road-tripping, Duffy “also often conducted additional visits like touring air traffic control towers and assessing port infrastructure,” which makes it sound as if his cabinet post was the side gig.

In a sense, though, Duffy’s performance is meeting expectations. He and other top Trump officials didn’t arrive with much experience in the kind of management their roles require. The “qualification” Duffy, Patel, and Makary share with the president is celebrity, whether as commentator, podcaster, or reality star.

These people were chosen because they made spectacles of themselves, and that is what they continue to do.