John Oliver Clowns Sean Duffy’s “God-Awful” Reality Show

Sean Duffy’s reality show finally found someone willing to sit through all three hours of it: John Oliver.

On Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, Oliver turned his attention to The Great American Road Trip, the six-part YouTube series starring the US Transportation Secretary, his wife and fellow former reality-TV star Rachel Campos-Duffy, and their family. After watching the whole thing, Oliver described it as a “god-awful” attempt at family reality television wrapped in the guise of a patriotic travel series.

Despite promotions billing the show as a way to get Americans exploring the country ahead of its 250th anniversary, Oliver said that very little of the series actually has anything to do with traveling. Instead, much of its runtime is devoted to the Duffys’ family life, including planning parties, a gender reveal, a vow renewal, and an extended storyline surrounding their daughter’s college decision.

That last thread gave Oliver one of his easiest targets. In a clip from the series, Duffy warns his daughter that institutions like Harvard corrupt the minds of young women. Oliver’s response was immediate: “What the fuck are you talking about?” He also asked why a supposed road-trip show was spent inside the family’s kitchen.

The segment arrives only days after Consequence reported that The Great American Road Trip premiered to a remarkably small audience. Its first episode had drawn just 2,900 YouTube views nearly a day after release, while subsequent installments initially struggled to break four figures. Promotions, a cameo from Donald Trump, and the Duffys’ previous history as reality-TV personalities apparently weren’t enough to turn the project into something people care about.

Oliver made clear that the more important part of the story is how the show came together in the first place. The Great American Road Trip received support from major corporations overseen by the Transportation Department, raising questions about the relationship between Duffy’s government role and the series.

Those ties aren’t confined to a list of sponsors. The show repeatedly puts Duffy inside businesses connected to the transportation industry. In South Carolina, he tours a Boeing plant with his family; in Texas, he visits a subsidiary of construction-materials giant CRH and touts the role asphalt companies play in building the highway system; and in Arizona, he takes several of his children for rides in Waymos while predicting the technology will “have a huge impact on saving lives on American roads.”

The overlaps are what made the project particularly troubling to Oliver. Companies featured in or connected to the series operate in industries overseen by Duffy’s department, prompting him to call the arrangement “ethically dubious.”

Those questions aren’t limited to late-night jokes. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation’s inspector general in May asking for an investigation into whether Duffy’s involvement in the project violated federal gift, travel, or ethics rules. The group has also sought more information about the production through Freedom of Information Act requests. Duffy has previously defended the project as a privately funded celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and dismissed criticism of it as politically motivated.

Oliver also pointed out that both the Duffys and the Transportation Department have been weirdly quiet about the show since it finally arrived on YouTube, despite the attention surrounding it before release. But he argued that whatever enthusiasm its creators may have lost, the questions surrounding its corporate backing remain worth pursuing.

And after spending three hours watching college debates, family parties, vow renewals, and thinly veiled commercials for giant corporations, Oliver had a fitting verdict: Rather than taking America on a road trip, he said, “we’ve all been taken for a fucking ride.”