Four of those children will accompany their parents on the upcoming leg of their road trip to Boston, Massachusetts and before they leave Duffy has to have a heart-to-heart with Paloma, his 17-year-old daughter. The family will soon be visiting colleges and the Transportation Secretary is worried. “Let’s say you got into Harvard, would you be pushing us to actually have you go?” Duffy asks.
The camera then cuts to Rachel Campos-Duffy in a jarring nod to the aggressive editing style that characterizes most reality TV. “We spent a lot of time nurturing and providing formation for our kids, giving them an environment where they’re steeped in faith and values,” a strangely barefoot Campos-Duffy says while curled up on the couch beside her husband. “And so the idea of dropping her off at a place that would undermine that, or try to undo all those things makes me worried.”
Poor Paloma pushes back. “I went to an extremely conservative school in high school, and I’m part of an extremely conservative family. If I go to a liberal setting, that’s a way more rounded education than if I go to a conservative high school and then a conservative college,” she says.
Unless you’re clamoring for a window into Paloma Campos-Duffy’s college plans for some reason, it’s not exactly compelling television. Still, it’s a conversation that gets at a tension that runs throughout the Great American Road Trip. Duffy and his family are ostensibly on a journey to “[explore] destinations, transportation, and all the people and places that make America unique.” There’s just one problem: Duffy isn’t actually interested in most of the country he spent months traveling across. In fact, he wants to protect himself and his family from much of it, just like he wants to keep Paloma away from Harvard.
Federal employees are bound by a code of ethical standards that strictly prohibit them from using their public office for private gain and from endorsing any product, service or enterprise while they serve. Of course, that rule has become more of a suggestion during the second Trump administration—which is how we got The Great American Road Trip.
In multiple episodes Duffy announces that he has to go to “work” for DOT, before visiting one of the medley of industry giants funding his family’s Road Trip.
Still, the disclaimers and quiet release of the series displays a level of self-consciousness that is uncharacteristic of the shameless Trump administration. Is it really possible that they got all the way through production before realizing how badly they’d broken the rules?
When the Duffy family visits Cambridge, they head to St. Paul’s Catholic Church to speak to Father Nathaniel Sanders, an undergraduate chaplain, about the Catholic culture at Harvard. Crammed together in a pew, the Duffys ask questions about whether a Catholic can possibly attend the Ivy League institution without becoming a God-less heathen.
“I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on,” Sanders tells the family. “You come here because it’s the best opportunity. And if someone has a sense of themselves and a sense of God before coming here, that will only flower.” The Duffys’ tour of Harvard Catholic Center is the only footage of the school included in the show, which suggests a college visit without a visit to the college. There’s a palpable sense that showing too much of Harvard would give the game away and expose just how preposterous the Duffys fearmongering about the school really is.
It’s what many of us would call a “learning moment,” but amid the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to target the university as part of a larger war on “liberal” institutions of higher education, it feels even more hollow. The administration’s war on these schools is rooted in ignorance, fear, and culture war nonsense. Duffy backed down after visiting Harvard. What would it take for the rest of the administration to do the same?
In the series’ final episode, Paloma learns she’s been accepted to the University of Chicago while driving down historic Route 66. As her family speeds into the past, she looks toward the future. It’s a heartwarming, kitschy ending to a nothingburger show. It makes you wonder why the family couldn’t visit Chicago. Then you remember that the Trump administration launched a federal invasion there.
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