Our current political landscape is so odd that when we talk about the reality series starring a sitting White House Cabinet secretary, it’s now necessary to ask, “Which one?”

We learned three weeks ago, for example, that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., already facing accusations that he’s thoroughly disengaged from his day job, launched a new celebrity cooking show.

But what about Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, himself a former Fox News host and reality show participant, who had already announced he and his family were starring in a controversial reality series to be aired on YouTube? Evidently, that’s now available, too. Politico reported:

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s reality-TV-themed family road trip video series has arrived on YouTube — weeks after it was initially expected to be released.

The six-episode show, which has been mired in controversy due to ethics questions surrounding Duffy’s participation, is now available online. Duffy had previously said the series would launch in June.

The launch hasn’t exactly generated much in the way of public attention. The online videos have generated paltry view counts, and as for engagement, it’s tough to gauge whether the people who watched the videos liked what they saw, since YouTube has turned off the comments.

In one of the videos, Duffy tells one of his kids that officials at Harvard “have professionalized figuring out how they can take good young girls like you and, I think, corrupt their minds.” Then he added that she’s at risk of becoming “perverted and contorted” if she goes to the celebrated Ivy League school.

Why this isn’t setting the internet on fire is anybody’s guess.

All joking aside, the underlying controversy surrounding the endeavor remains entirely unmitigated. When Duffy announced in May that he and his family would star in the series, he suggested it was just a fun little online exercise, highlighting a multipart family road trip, ostensibly tied to the United States’ 250th anniversary.

But it wasn’t nearly that simple. For one thing, the transportation secretary decided to promote a lengthy road trip at a time when millions of Americans are struggling with the burdens of high gas prices generated by the Republican administration’s unnecessary war with Iran.

What’s more, there were questions about how he managed to squeeze this into his schedule last year while simultaneously leading a large Cabinet agency (and NASA).

But perhaps most important of all is the fact that the show was sponsored by companies that Duffy’s department oversees and regulates, sparking unavoidable ethical questions.

When several congressional Democrats and watchdog organizations, such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, pressed the Department of Transportation’s acting inspector general to investigate Duffy’s involvement in the series, some observers wondered whether the videos would ever go online.

This week, however, the series launched anyway.

Politico’s report concluded, “At the end of each episode, there is a disclaimer that says the ‘appearance of any product, individual, business, or private entity in this program does not constitute an endorsement’ by the Transportation Department” — a disclaimer one assumes was endorsed by DOT ethics attorneys who approved the project.

Calls for an inspector general investigation, however, have not disappeared. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Despite ethics questions and months of delay, Secretary Duffy’s reality series launches appeared first on MS NOW.

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