Newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy only had a few hours to celebrate his promotion before tragedy struck.
Duffy was all smiles Wednesday when Vice President JD Vance delivered the oath of office to lead the Department of Transportation following a bipartisan vote on Tuesday in the Senate, enjoying the long-awaited moment with his wife and children.
But hours later — following conversations with President Donald Trump, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS), and National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Jennifer Homendy — Duffy was taking the podium for a hastily arranged press conference on the midair collision between a civilian airliner and a military helicopter that left 67 people dead just outside of Washington, D.C.
“Not just the local team but the federal team has performed very well in this crisis,” Duffy said at the press gathering inside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. “I know the president is incredibly concerned about what happened today. I’m sure we’ll continue to hear more from him, and I’ll continue to consult with him and [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth.”
The press conference ended at 1:20 a.m. on the East Coast.
Duffy was back at it at 7 a.m. Thursday morning to speak again about the worst commercial airline disaster in 16 years.
And later Thursday morning, he spoke alongside the president, Vice President JD Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a third press conference at 11 a.m. at the White House, this time following combative remarks from Trump himself.
Persons knowledgable told the Washington Examiner that, even with such a jarring transition, Duffy immediately focused on rallying the agency’s 55,000 employees around communicating the DOT’s core mission of safety to the public. The secretary specifically vowed support for any NTSB investigations into the Reagan airport crash, including investigations of DOT and the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Obviously, there will be a review of what happened here tonight,” Duffy said at the first press conference following the crash. “After the Federal Aviation Administration studies what happened, we will take appropriate action if necessary to modify flight paths and permissions.”
While Duffy’s confirmation was strongly bipartisan — he cleared a procedural vote 97-0 — the plane crash quickly turned political. Anti-Trump voices on social media pointed out that he put a hiring freeze on air traffic controllers upon taking office, but Trump himself put the blame on the government’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts under the Biden administration.
“You must have only the highest standards to work in our aviation system,” Trump said. “I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put the policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”
“You have to go by brain power,” he added. “You have to go by psychological quality. These are very powerful tests that we put to use and they were terminated by Biden.”
Taking the lectern immediately after Trump, Duffy backed his boss’s stance that DEI was, at the least, not helping air traffic control efforts and should be eliminated.
“When we deal with safety, we can only accept the best and the brightest in positions of safety that impact the lives of our loved ones, our family members,” Duffy said with Trump standing by his side. “And I think you make a really important point on that, Mr. President. That is the motto of your presidency: the best and the brightest.”
That statement put Duffy in an immediate war of words with his transportation secretary predecessor, former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg, who left the job less than two weeks ago, described Duffy and Trump’s claims as “despicable.”
“As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg posted on X. “We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.”
Despite their obvious differences, Duffy and Buttigieg have more than a few things in common.
Both are former Midwestern office holders, with Buttigieg serving as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a rumored Senate candidate in Michigan, while Duffy spent nine years as a Wisconsin congressman.
Both men are media friendly as well, leading to a higher-than-usual profile for the transportation secretary job. Buttigieg made waves in the 2020 Democratic primary for his smooth demeanor and delivery and was a frequent guest on Fox News during his run as transportation secretary.
Duffy was a Fox Business co-host after leaving Congress and before getting into politics was a reality television star on MTV’s The Real World: Boston, where he met his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy.
Both Duffy and Buttigieg also became transportation secretary with little to no background in transportation, a fact that has factored in criticism of Buttigieg and could plague Duffy as well.
During his confirmation hearing, Duffy emphasized that aviation and roadway safety are his top priorities, along with restoring trust in U.S. planemaker Boeing following an incident in which a 737 Max 9 passenger jet lost a door plug in early 2024. Two Boeing 727 Max plane crashes in 2018 and 2019 also put the company under the microscope.
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“I don’t think safety is a partisan issue,” Duffy said. “The projects we talk about in your offices and we’ll talk about today, those aren’t partisan projects. Infrastructure is not partisan, so I’m committed to working in a bipartisan fashion to make sure we are looking at the best projects and the safest record.”
That safety record will now come under severe scrutiny following the first major airline crash on U.S. soil since 2009, meaning Duffy will enjoy no honeymoon period to grow accustomed to his new position.
