← Pod Force One
Pod Force One
Sean Duffy spills on Plane Crashes, "Racist" Roads, Moon Bases & Epic Musk Clash
01:02:58
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- [00:02]
Miranda Devine
Welcome back to the Pod Force One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine, and today I'm in the Department of Transportation Central Command hub, and I'm with Secretary Sean Duffy, who has the enormous task of overhauling America's transit infrastructure. Secretary Duffy, thanks so much for joining Pod Force One.
- [00:21]
Sean Duffy
It's great to be with you, Miranda. I appreciate it. Pod Force One, such an honor.
- [00:25]
Miranda Devine
Thank you. And we're in this amazing room, the nerve center, I guess, of the department. Tell us what it's all about.
- [00:32]
Sean Duffy
Yeah, this is the talk is what we call it. So when crisis happens at the Department of Transportation, say, like in East Palestine, I wasn't here for that. But this kicks up and we have great communication and a great space to coordinate all of our equities to make sure we can respond effectively. The faa, which is also under dot, has their own talk. Like, this is just not quite as. This is a nice space, but again, you can't see behind the cameras, but there's a lot of space where you can bring people in and be responsive.
- [01:06]
Miranda Devine
And East Palestine, Ohio, was a disaster for the people who lived there. Were you amazed just sitting on the outside seeing your predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, ignored it. The president, President Biden didn't go there for months. Donald Trump went there as a candidate, you know, then not in office. He went there to help the people.
- [01:25]
Sean Duffy
So at the time, I was working on Fox Business, the bottom line, which you on quite a bit, which I appreciate. And I think we were the first TV show to cover it and the lack of response and, and again, half the job is showing up and seeing what's going on, putting your eyes on it, not reading a report and seeing what people need as they're trying to recover from. What you're right was a, was a tragic event. But what our mission is now is to learn from what happened in East Palestine and, and make rules and policy so that we don't have another East Palestine. And that's what we're trying to do right now.
- [02:02]
Miranda Devine
And I mean, your first day as Transport Secretary was just a baptism of fire. Tragedy struck. Tell us what happened.
- [02:12]
Sean Duffy
So I was sworn in on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, J.D. vance, the Vice President, did another swearing in for me with my whole family. And then that night was when DCA happened. And again, I had just got here and so we responded. I have a brand new team. We went over with the faa. We had a good team over there. And what happened?
- [02:35]
Miranda Devine
What happened at dca?
- [02:36]
Sean Duffy
What went wrong? Yeah, we had a military helicopter that was doing A training mission. And this has been happening for years, if not decades. You have this fight along the Potomac where, where military aircraft and other aircraft can fly. And what we were seeing was you have cross traffic between, between fixed wing aircraft and these helicopters. And the standard procedure was that the helicopter would say that they can see the airplane and they're going to maintain visual separation. There's not active control from the tower on those helicopters. And that's what happened on that night. But obviously the pilot of the helicopter did not see the landing aircraft and they were flying too far out in the river and they were flying too high. And we had the collision, which by the way has made us take a number of different actions on how the airspace works around dca. We've closed off, restricted that airspace so helicopters do not fly through that space unless it's the President, the Vice President, a law enforcement mission or a life saving mission, that's it. And if it does happen, somebody is going to fly through that space. We shut down air traffic.
- [03:44]
Miranda Devine
So you don't have common sense. It's amazing it didn't happen before.
- [03:49]
Sean Duffy
There were 85 near misses in this airspace in the three years before this crash. So someone should have seen it. Yes, in the last administration they didn't. Tragedy struck, 67 people lost their lives. And so we've taken action. But not only that, it's important that you say, well, if this happened at dca, what else is the FAA missing? Where else do we have hotspots like dca? And so we've started a review, places like New York and LA and Las Vegas, Alaska. So we're using a review, but also AI to see do we have issues and how do we resolve those issues based on what we learned at dca?
- [04:27]
Miranda Devine
So can you reassure the American public that there won't be another commercial aviation disaster soon?
- [04:33]
Sean Duffy
No, you can never assure anybody. But I can assure you that flying by airplane, commercial air travel is the safest mode of transportation by far. It's the safest way we move people.
- [04:44]
Miranda Devine
But when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong.
- [04:46]
Sean Duffy
It goes wrong, but a different stat. We lose 40,000 plus people on our roads every year. You don't have near that kind of loss in aviation. But with that said, what we've seen is there is a need to upgrade our system. It is way too old and that doesn't mean it's not safe. But what we see is you're starting to see the cracks in the system. You're starting to see blips in communication. And so listen this is the mission right now of DOT number one mission is to fix air traffic control. I would tell you it's not easy, it's really complicated. But I want to do it. The President wants to do it. The American people want it done. The Congress has partnered with us and so it's going to cost us $31.5 billion to do it all. We've got 12 and a half billion dollars in the big beautiful bill that's going to help us start the process. But I think we can get it done in three, four years if all goes well.
- [05:45]
Miranda Devine
Fix the air traffic controller problem and modernize the systems.
- [05:49]
Sean Duffy
Yes. So we have money. If I can take a moment, I'll tell you what we're going to do. So we have telecom, we use copper wires, not fiber.
- [05:57]
Miranda Devine
Because that was the problem with Newark when the radar went down, wasn't it? That these very antiquated copper wires instead of using fiber optics.
- [06:05]
Sean Duffy
That's right. So what, what happened there was the, the, the Biden Buttigieg administration moved the, the, what's called a tracon, which was in New York. They moved it down to Philadelphia before they. Well, because there's, there's, there's been some staffing problems up at N90 in New York and so they thought they could improve the staffing down if they move it the. To the Philippines.
- [06:27]
Miranda Devine
Is that a political thing?
- [06:28]
Sean Duffy
No, I, listen, I think there's wide agreement on that.
- [06:30]
Unnamed Guest
Okay.
- [06:30]
Sean Duffy
The problem was though that they didn't test the lines, they didn't make sure it was hardened before they made the move which led us to these, these several 30 second outages in telecom, which is a problem.
- [06:44]
Miranda Devine
And that's in tracking the planes.
- [06:46]
Sean Duffy
So that's in the communication with, between the controller and the airplane.
- [06:50]
Miranda Devine
Wow.
- [06:50]
Sean Duffy
And then also the scope, the radar went down for 90 seconds and it went down for 90 seconds because when they had a 30 second outage, then the scopes that show us the airplanes, they had a reboot that took another minute. So by the way, we have policies in place if that happens, on what redundancies kick in. And we did that. But what we've done is we've laid brand new fiber now. Brand new fiber. We partnered with Verizon in a month they laid a brand new fiber line for us. We tested it the next month and that has stood up. And so we have the telecom issue addressed at Newark, but we have to do this around the country. So we have money to do that. We have radar from the, from the, the. Somewhere in the 60s, a lot of in the 70s, a couple from the 80s, really old radar. So we're going to upgrade our. Our radar.
- [07:40]
Miranda Devine
I've seen photographs that your office has put out of the mess you inherited, including, you know, desk fans trying to cool down radar and copy disks, floppy disks, paper strips.
- [07:50]
Sean Duffy
You're right. This stuff is so old.
- [07:52]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [07:53]
Sean Duffy
And so we're going to do the hard infrastructure. Get that done with this $12.5 billion. But here's the key. So if I don't know how old our audience is, but think back to Windows 95. It's an operating system that at the time in 95, it was great. Like, I can't believe Windows 95 is brilliant.
- [08:09]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [08:10]
Sean Duffy
The operating system that we use to, to control air traffic, one dates back to 95, another one was from 2000. So it's really, really old.
- [08:20]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [08:21]
Sean Duffy
And we have to develop. We need money from Congress to start the development of a new software system, a common automation platform that's going to help us have new technology, make it more efficient, make it safer to control our airspace. And the advancements that have been made in the 30 years since you had Windows 95, which, by the way, we don't use Windows 95, I use that as an example, has just improved leaps and bounds. And so. But that's going to be the. That's going to be part of the brand new system that is going to be deployed. And what's interesting is more people want to travel by plane. We're going to have drones in our airspace delivering you a hot cup of coffee or delivering your Amazon order.
- [09:04]
Miranda Devine
Makes it complicated for you, though.
- [09:07]
Sean Duffy
That's more complicated. And then we're going to have the what are called evitals, these Ubers in the air that they look like drones, but people are in them. We want to start moving people around in shorter distances with those. So the airspace is getting more complicated. The system we're going to build is going to allow us to control that airspace. And also as new technology becomes available, we're going to be able to build off the system that we are going to create right now. And so as new technology, it's going to be like your iPhone, right, Miranda? I have an iPhone 17 will be the new model. I'm building an iPhone 17 with no apps on it. I'm going to let you let technology evolve and we'll put new apps on this phone as technology advances.
- [09:48]
Miranda Devine
Right, Right.
- [09:49]
Sean Duffy
So that's the plan.
- [09:50]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [09:50]
Miranda Devine
And I mean, flying has become really degrading experience. You know, There are delays. The airlines are cutting costs. And I always wonder if it's because of the proliferation of private jets, mean that the wealthier people who would never put up with that kind of service are now, you know, off, offline and clogging up the skies. I mean, is there with this private jet travel and how far can it go?
- [10:18]
Sean Duffy
I don't think so. Again, more people have tried to fly on private aircraft because it has been so bad to fly commercially. And I think if you look at what's happening, one, we have, we have to deal with weather, you have to deal with mechanical issues. But the other part of this has been not only the infrastructure around air traffic control. We've had an air traffic controller, the bodies and the towers. We've had a staffing issue that dates back to the last administration. And so sometimes the FAA will restrict the airspace, which will mean you're delayed or you're canceled. And we do that because the paramount issue is not that you leave on time. We don't. That's. That's a big deal. But we care about you leaving and getting to where you're going safely. And so we'll restrict traffic if we don't have enough controllers in the tower or there's some issue with our systems. So I think that's the problem. And airlines actually want more people to fly. They want more flights. And so it's not the airlines. It's just that we've let this system get so old and we haven't paid attention to the number of controllers that we have in the system to actually address the increased capacity. We're flying more people now than we were before COVID So we're also bringing on more air traffic controllers. That's a complicated problem that we're navigating. But we're paying bonuses to get more young, smart people into the academies. We're paying our current controllers bonuses to not retire.
- [11:41]
Miranda Devine
Is that working?
- [11:42]
Sean Duffy
It is working. Again, we've offered. So you have to serve 25 years. So a lot of these, they have to retire by 56. Many of them retire at 50, 51. So I'm giving them a 20% upfront bonus for every year that they stay. And a lot of them are staying. And so that's. We want those, their experience, we want them to stay on it. We're 3,000 controllers short, but we're thinking through, by the way, we're not doing this by the thousands. I'm doing it by the tens and hundreds to increase the number of controllers. So I think when you fly, you want to make sure your flight's going to go. I make a joke. I think the FAA hates me because it seems like every flight I'm on is delayed or it's canceled. And I'm like, we expect our system to work better. And by the time we leave in three and a half years, it is going to work a hell of a lot better than it works right now.
- [12:31]
Miranda Devine
And I guess you've had many predecessors who have tried and failed. I mean, a lot of these problems date back to the Reagan administration. Why do you think you're going to be able to do it?
- [12:42]
Sean Duffy
That's a great question. So one of the problems is there's been a lack of vision with the faa. There's been a lack of funding and sporadic funding and people didn't really know. Maybe they didn't care. But after DCA and after Newark, the American people care about this, the Congress, this is historic that they gave us $12.5 billion. It's a huge leap of faith for them to say, I think the FAA can do it. So those two things are different. And on top of that, one of the benefits of the DOGE movement has been a lot of really smart people who would never give their time to government have actually said, I'm willing to volunteer my time and I want to come in and make government work more efficiently. And we've been able to pull some really smart people in who love aviation, who want to help us out, to help us think differently about how we can do it faster. And just Miranda, you got to think with this, we're going to upgrade a system, whether it's telecom or radar or this common automation platform. We're going to have to do that while we have airplanes in the air. Yes, it gets to be complicated.
- [13:49]
Miranda Devine
It's kind of a day off.
- [13:51]
Sean Duffy
Might not be able to take some time off at night as we do the switchover, but that's the smart people we need helping us. And they are. And I think that's what's different. There's a whole of government approach. One other thing, usually the FAA engages with businesses at a mid management level. What's great is because this is so important For America, American CEOs whose companies partner with us to provide these services. The CEOs are engaging with us. We're not dealing with mid level management. We're dealing with the CEOs who want to make sure that their companies deliver. It's not just for the faa, but it's for the President, it's for the American people. And it's great publicity for those who do well, like Verizon. When they laid a line between Philly and Newark in 30 days, that would never happen before. That would have been a three year project.
- [14:41]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [14:41]
Sean Duffy
And here they did it in one month. So that kind of support and engagement at the top level is what the difference is.
- [14:50]
Miranda Devine
And you mentioned Doge. Famously, you had a stash with Elon Musk because he was trying to cut. You're saying I'm not cutting air traffic controllers. Tell us about that and your perception of what happened with Elon and the president.
- [15:03]
Sean Duffy
Well, so first, I get along well enough with Elon. He has, he has a number of equities that come through dot. Yeah. It's important. Elon, or no one else, is the secretary. I am, yes. The Senate confirmed me.
- [15:17]
Miranda Devine
Was he trying to muscle in?
- [15:18]
Sean Duffy
And no, I don't know about that. But you know, with. On this issue, again, and I think it might not have been intentional, might have been ham handed by some of the requests that were made by Doge. But my position was we are not going to fire air traffic controllers. This was before DCA safety critical positions are not going to be fired within the Department of Transportation. We can do things more efficiently. There's. There is fat that being cut, but we are not going to fire controllers. And so we had a little back and forth. We got along very well after that. It was not, it was not a. I think the papers made it a bigger deal than it was. But again, Elon is an amazing innovator. He's creative. And again, there's a lot to learn from him. But I run this department and again, I didn't want someone on the outside trying to tell me to fire people. Where had I done that? Had I actually fired controllers? Oh my. Think what the liberal media would do to me. I'd be slaughtered. We didn't, thank God. But. Which is why throughout government, you have to make sure that the secretaries are the ones who are driving the policy.
- [16:24]
Miranda Devine
You know, the other crazy thing I think that you inherited was all this DEI nonsense. Pete Buttigieg, the former Transportation Secretary, spent a billion dollars on trying to stop roads and bridges from being racist. What was that?
- [16:43]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [16:44]
Sean Duffy
So there's a number of things that he did. For example, the Congress sends this department money and then we give that money out in grants. And what Pete did was he add additional. He added additional requirements to the grants that we would give out. So if you want a grant from the Department of Transportation, you had to have a Very aggressive DEI policy. Or he would say, you have to have a really extreme green agenda as part of your proposal to get the grants. Now, Congress never, never said he had to do that. He just did it himself. And on top of that, it costs more money. It takes more time.
- [17:25]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [17:25]
Sean Duffy
So we pulled all that stuff out. You know, he. On the racist road front, you know, he had. Back in this, back in the 60s, were roads built through communities that might have been of color, that separated them. Yeah, that did happen. But there were some proposals to rip out these freeways, to rip out roads because they were racist. I'm like, hey, put a bridge over them or put an underpass under. If you want to connect communities, maybe that's the way you do it. But again, driving policy, that there was racism behind roads. He saw racism around every single corner to the point where in aviation, he was so concerned about this, he wanted to change. He did change the name of cockpit to Flight Deck because Cockpit is too offensive and too masculine, I guess. Or we have what's. We have. No, tam. It's Notice to Airmen. He's like, oh, that's offensive. I need to change it to Notice to Air Mission because it's exclusive, exclusionary. These are the dumb things that they did. And Miranda, when they did that, the problem is that they weren't paying attention to the main mission of the department, which is safety. And when you have these near misses that happen at DCA between helicopters and planes, you're not focused on that. You're focused on what language we're using around cockpit and Flight deck. And so, again, I think they completely missed the boat. And in the end, they passed off a department that needed a lot of attention, which is what we've given them.
- [19:00]
Miranda Devine
Yeah, that really is insane. Also, is it true that Pete Buttigieg prioritized the hiring of people with severe intellectual disabilities and mental illness to be flight controllers?
- [19:15]
Sean Duffy
No, I think what happened there was. Specifically, what they did was. There's. So you do. And the President agrees with this. You want the best and the brightest air traffic controllers. The best you can get.
- [19:27]
Miranda Devine
Because it's such a tough job.
- [19:28]
Sean Duffy
It's a tough job. And by the way, it's really hard to figure out who's going to be good at it. Well, really, you could get a baker and a candlestick maker that are great at it, and, you know, someone else with a math degree that just doesn't figure it out.
- [19:39]
Unnamed Guest
Really?
- [19:40]
Sean Duffy
Yeah.
- [19:40]
Miranda Devine
Why? Is it like spatial intelligence?
- [19:43]
Sean Duffy
Yes. They haven't really figured out the best test to do this. But the test we have is the best indicator.
- [19:49]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
- [19:49]
Sean Duffy
And so it's the entrance exam. And so you got to take a.
- [19:53]
Miranda Devine
Test IQ or what are they measuring?
- [19:55]
Sean Duffy
Is this a spatial. It is spatial. It's numbers.
- [19:57]
Miranda Devine
I'd be terrible.
- [19:59]
Sean Duffy
So would I. But they lowered the standard from 85% to 80 to be best qualified.
- [20:06]
Miranda Devine
Under Buddha Judge.
- [20:07]
Sean Duffy
Under Buddha Judge. To get these young people into the academy. Well, what happened was they, they had a substantial washout rate, 30% plus. Demoralizing for the kids because they couldn't do the work. Right. That was number, that was number one. And then it took so long. If they go, Miranda, you take the test, you pass it, you got an 82%. It might take you two years to get your seat in the academy. Well, if you're 22 years old, you're going to go find a different job.
- [20:36]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [20:36]
Sean Duffy
Right. You're not going to stick around. So what we've done is, by the way, this is more complicated than you could imagine. It was hard to get the decks cleared. But we're getting kids, young people into the academy much faster.
- [20:49]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
- [20:49]
Sean Duffy
So in two months after you take the entrance examination, we're getting you into the academy. And what we're doing is if, if you're at 98 on that test, you 94, you are going to take the top slots as slots become available. So we're getting the best scores in the academy first. And what we've done with that is we've lowered the washout rate, right?
- [21:08]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [21:09]
Sean Duffy
Which means we can get more, more young people into, you know, into towers. Now once they're in, by the way, it takes them depending on where they're at. If they're in a not so busy airspace, they can be certified in a year. If they go to really busy airspace, it might take them three years. So the problem around the number of air traffic controllers we have is it's going to take us time to see the fruits of our hard labor right now, but we're well on our way to fill in the gaps in air traffic control.
- [21:39]
Miranda Devine
And what sort of people are they? Air traffic controllers? Because it's such a complicated and important job and we don't really see behind the sort of into the black box of what they are. Are they stressed? Are they, you know, a types? What are they like?
- [21:54]
Sean Duffy
Some will say they're stressed, some will say they're not as stressed. Some of them are forced in some of the towers or tracons to work a lot of hours and they're forced to work overtime. So that does stress them and it challenges the work life balance for them. But I'll tell you this, they care about safety because what they do, they have sometimes hundreds of people in their lives at the, at their disposal and the decisions that they make. And so they take it very seriously. And when you see plane crashes and the controllers that are in, you know, in the, in the cab making the decisions, even if it wasn't their fault, the, the mental stress and anguish that's caused to them is, is very real. And so they take their job seriously. They have a retirement at 25 after 25 years of service. And a lot of them will say, I don't want to stay longer. I am, I am burnt out.
- [22:47]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [22:49]
Sean Duffy
But again, a little extra pay can help them. You know what, they're patriots too. A lot of them want to see us, you know, bridge the gap. And I think as a patriot, someone who'd wear an American flag pad on their shirt, yeah, they'll, I think many of them are willing to stay a little bit longer and help us.
- [23:06]
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- [23:36]
Mike Baker
Hey, Mike Baker here, host of the President's Daily Brief podcast. If you want straight talk on national security, foreign policy and the biggest global stories going on of the day, this is the show for you. We publish twice a day, Monday through Friday, once in the morning, again in the afternoon, and on the weekend, we go longer with the PDB Situation report with excellent guests including national security insiders and foreign policy experts. Check us out on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also on our YouTube channel at PresidentsDaily Brief.
- [24:09]
Miranda Devine
I know President Trump told you that if he wasn't president, the job he most wanted was your job, which sort of surprised me. But why is that?
- [24:18]
Sean Duffy
It's not surprising, and I tell you why. Because what you know about him is he loves to build. He's a builder and he bought me as a developer and built skyscrapers and resorts and did it remarkably well. It's interesting what he likes. I mean, he really is fascinated and cares about roads and bridges and, you know, what kind of pavement is being Used.
- [24:40]
Unnamed Guest
Really?
- [24:41]
Sean Duffy
How are we doing it? Are we spending too much money? Are we doing too much? Could we just resurface as opposed to ripping up, like, he's, like the, the way he's such a brilliant thinker and the things he, he, he dives into.
- [24:55]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [24:56]
Sean Duffy
So he, he cares about that part of our project. He also cares about the airspace. So the two things were build big, beautiful roads and bridges. I think he said 20 cents in the dollar. I'm like, I'm not sure I can do 20 cents on the dollar. But.
- [25:10]
Miranda Devine
Meaning what?
- [25:11]
Sean Duffy
Don't. Don't do it more cheaply.
- [25:13]
Miranda Devine
Right. Don't spend 20 cents.
- [25:15]
Sean Duffy
No, save 80 cents.
- [25:16]
Miranda Devine
Save 80 cents. Oh, wow.
- [25:18]
Sean Duffy
Spend 20 cents. Right. I was like, oh, that's a little tough. But, but he cares about that in doing it more.
- [25:23]
Miranda Devine
If you get rid of regulations, that should make it cheaper and easier.
- [25:27]
Sean Duffy
Yes, that's, that's right. So I suppose I'm going to come back to that. He cares about the airspace, too. He talked about that as well before he gave me the job.
- [25:34]
Miranda Devine
Why does he care about the airspace?
- [25:35]
Sean Duffy
You know, he flies. He talks to pilots.
- [25:38]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [25:38]
Sean Duffy
He loves airplanes.
- [25:39]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [25:40]
Sean Duffy
And so he knows that the problems that existed, he knew about them before even dca, before we started this mission. He was aware of that.
- [25:48]
Miranda Devine
And just that first night, DCA and you had to go on television and, you know, you just didn't know anything about the job really. But you were very calm, cool and collected. And I think President Trump, I think everyone felt reassured by your demeanor. But did President Trump reach out to you at that time?
- [26:07]
Unnamed Guest
Was.
- [26:08]
Sean Duffy
So I was talking to the Situation Room. I did talk to the president, and he was, he was, he was engaged from the, from the beginning, which is really helpful. And had a great response. You know, the, the, the federal and the state and the local response was wonderful.
- [26:25]
Miranda Devine
Give you any messages to impart to the public or.
- [26:28]
Sean Duffy
We, he, he wanted to know what happened.
- [26:30]
Miranda Devine
Right.
- [26:31]
Sean Duffy
And so he.
- [26:31]
Miranda Devine
Was he angry?
- [26:34]
Sean Duffy
No, he, I think he was. Maybe some people don't see him as being very sensitive. I felt like he was, he was struck by the number of people who had died in one of the. And I'll just be frank with you, one of the hard parts with that night was what I, what I knew and what I could say.
- [26:53]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [26:54]
Sean Duffy
And that was incredibly hard. And I talked to some of the family. This is, this is why this mission is so important. I talked to some of the families the next day. And you do not want to talk to families who went to the airport to pick up a loved one and might have been texting with them on the airplane as they're about to land. They never show up. I'm going to do all I can to make sure that never happens again. To a next set of families, to the next secretary. And doing our job truly impacts people's lives. And the American Airlines families have rallied together in a really unique way and they're committed to the mission of safety. But it is that part of it is you don't want to do that. You don't want to have to go through that. And if you can prevent it, you want to. And I think there was an emotional side to the President in regard to the families who had lost their lives. And then he wanted to know what happened, what caused this crash and how do we fix it? Because he knew, he's interested. He, he doesn't wallow. He, he in all kinds of spaces. He's like, solution driven. So it was both sides of him, the sensitive side, but. And then also we got to fix this. What was it?
- [28:08]
Miranda Devine
And the curiosity side.
- [28:09]
Sean Duffy
Yeah. And we didn't have all the information at that point. No, I had some of it, but not all of it. And, and so again, as we've gone forward, he's wanted to know.
- [28:18]
Miranda Devine
It was such a freak accident, and I think he went straight to dei, you know, woman pilot, whatever. I mean, was that fair?
- [28:26]
Sean Duffy
If we're making decisions on who gets into cockpits, we put our lives in their hands. Even the liberals who love dei, they don't want their pilot to be di. They don't want their controller to be dei. They want the best controller. They want the best pilot.
- [28:40]
Miranda Devine
They want merit.
- [28:41]
Sean Duffy
They want merit based. Yeah, that's right. And so that's the issue, I think, again, if it's, if it's not good enough for me, why should it be good enough for any other American? And so that's the, I think the real takeaway from what the President said is get the best people in these positions, because if they're not, people lose their lives.
- [28:59]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [29:00]
Miranda Devine
And your relationship with the president, I mean, you've known him for years. I mean, you've been an interviewer and anchor on Fox News. So you've interviewed him. Has your relationship changed since you've become, I guess, he's your boss now?
- [29:13]
Sean Duffy
He's my boss. And by the way, I couldn't, I couldn't have a better boss, a more engaged boss. What I think is I've had a chance to spend. So I was with him in Trump 1. I was in Congress, I was very supportive in 2016, and I would go on CNN and MSNBC and I was, listen, I was one of, like, four members of Congress that were really aggressively supporting him because I loved his vision.
- [29:38]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [29:39]
Sean Duffy
And what I've seen when I get to work up close with him is the brilliance about how he thinks about things. And I've seen enough politicians and how they think about what I can do and what I can't do, not what I should do. He does what he should do to make America stronger and safer and the politics be damned. He's willing to break through all kinds of things to make sure the American people are treated right and treated well. I have an issue right now that I'm dealing with Canada on and Mexico on. Different than what he's dealing with Canada and Mexico on and I.
- [30:14]
Miranda Devine
On airspace or something.
- [30:15]
Sean Duffy
When I bring things up to him, it's like, what's the right thing to do? And he says, go do it, go do it. And he, what he, he makes. I think his gut is remarkable. Some people might say, I can't believe he did. And then you wait three days and it's like, the President was right. He. His gut is really good at.
- [30:33]
Miranda Devine
And he's almost superstitious about following his instinct, isn't he?
- [30:36]
Sean Duffy
In his. Yeah. I don't know about the superstitious, but his instinct.
- [30:40]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [30:41]
Sean Duffy
Is usually right.
- [30:42]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [30:42]
Sean Duffy
And again, you can play clips back from him on what he said, how the media went after him, and how in the end, Donald Trump is usually right because his gut is. And I don't know. I don't know why his gut is so good, but it is really good. And so my point with that is he makes decisions. He doesn't wallow and think and he gets an impression. He gets a gut reaction and he makes the decision. There are a few things he'll want to wait on, he'll take some time on, but a lot of times his gut is really good and usually right. So I love that leadership, you know, it's decisive leadership.
- [31:14]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [31:15]
Sean Duffy
Decisive rule, decisive decisions.
- [31:17]
Miranda Devine
And so let's go back to your previous life in politics. And that was. You were a congressman for Wisconsin.
- [31:24]
Sean Duffy
Yeah.
- [31:25]
Miranda Devine
And. And you gave all that up because you had now eight children and your beautiful wife, Rachel Campbell, Stuffy, who is a star Fox anchor, she was pregnant with your ninth child and she got some news.
- [31:43]
Sean Duffy
Yeah. So she. So this will be our ninth baby. And just to be really fair, if you let your husband be a member of Congress, and you have eight kids, the workload that falls on you is substantial. And she was carrying a lot of most of the home life as I was out serving my constituents. And I think it was in April or May, she had gone to an ultrasound. I was in Washington. She called me after and told me that she had got a diagnosis, that our baby was going to have down syndrome. And I was like, this is great, because everyone I know has down syndrome or any parents who've had down syndrome children, they've been incredibly pleased. Their joys in their life. So that was not a hit for me.
- [32:28]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
- [32:28]
Sean Duffy
Really, I knew it'd be different.
- [32:30]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [32:30]
Sean Duffy
But I didn't. I wasn't. I wasn't upset. I wasn't. Well, then in, I think, July, and.
- [32:36]
Miranda Devine
Then Valentina also, I think you knew was going to have heart issues.
- [32:39]
Sean Duffy
In July, we found out that she was going to have heart issues. And at that point, I'm like, you know what? My job is to my family, And I think this is too much. And so I decided to leave early. We had a number of issues going on. And I thought this. Because when you're gone from home and this, military men and women see this. Maybe truck drivers see it, you see it in Congress, if you're going a lot, there's something Mrs. When mom or dad is gone too much. And I had been gone for nine years. And so I thought, you know what? This is. My main job is to raise my kids. And by the way, when I'm on my deathbed, hopefully decades away, well, I go, I passed that bill. Or like, I won with 68% of the vote. Like, no, it's like, I was a good dad.
- [33:27]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [33:28]
Sean Duffy
I raised my kids. I did the best that I could. And so I resigned. Was that a wrench to resign?
- [33:34]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [33:35]
Sean Duffy
I cried like a baby.
- [33:36]
Miranda Devine
Did you?
- [33:36]
Sean Duffy
I did. I was. I was heartbroken. I love my. I love my job. I love being a member of Congress. And though I did made the right decision, I did a couple of speeches, Miranda, for like a week after, I think people just asked me, like. Like, I announced. And then there was a speech the next night for the local senator, who is actually now the member of Congress there. They asked me to come to the event, and I stood up and I think I spoke for 12 seconds. And I started. I started crying, and they applauded, and I just. And I left. I couldn't. I know I love the job, but I made the right decision. And I tell you, Rachel was a little. She wanted me to stay she said I can do it. And why was that? I think she, she loves the service. She loves and she loves, she's from Arizona, but loved Wisconsin and, and probably.
- [34:22]
Miranda Devine
Didn'T want to see you give up something that you love.
- [34:25]
Sean Duffy
That I loved. Yeah. And. But now she would say you made the right decision. And so what, did you have any.
- [34:30]
Miranda Devine
Plans of what you would do?
- [34:31]
Sean Duffy
No.
- [34:32]
Miranda Devine
Really?
- [34:32]
Sean Duffy
So here's the.
- [34:33]
Miranda Devine
So I have so 9 kids and no job. Really?
- [34:36]
Sean Duffy
When you're in Congress, you have two schedulers.
- [34:38]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [34:39]
Sean Duffy
And one in your district and one in D.C. i had like every 15 minutes to half an hour scheduled in my life full. And I resigned and I had nothing on my calendar. I think I had a dentist appointment.
- [34:53]
Miranda Devine
That might be quite nice.
- [34:54]
Sean Duffy
It was. No, it actually was, it stressed me out. I'm like, what am I going to do? And so. And then our baby came a month early. So I got out like a week later. The baby came early and it was chaotic. And at that point I, I signed with cnn, went to cnn. I signed a two year contract and only did a year of it. CNN was a little harder on me. I don't, I think, I think Fox treats liberals way better than CNN was treating conservatives at that time.
- [35:23]
Miranda Devine
What did they do?
- [35:24]
Sean Duffy
You know, like they would take clips of me who work for them and they'd run them and attack me. And I'm like, I'm your.
- [35:30]
Miranda Devine
Wow.
- [35:30]
Sean Duffy
I'm in the family. Like, yeah, we don't do that. Like there's. You want people to debate. Like, debates are good. You want two sides that can have a conversation. In Fox you might have three on one, and at CNN you might have the vice versa. Three liberals on one. But it's a good debate. It makes good tv. They would, they would come after me even after I was off the air and run clips and attack me. And I thought that was just. That's not mean. It's mean. It is mean. So luckily after a year, I left and a week later I signed with Fox and found my ride home. And then Fox was good to me. And by the way, Fox is. And you're in the building. They support families. They've supported Rachel through all of. Well, not all of them, but the later babies, they've been very supportive. And so they, She's a superstar. They walk the walk, they talk the talk. It's really, it's really wonderful. And she's isn't so. She is the rock star and superstar of our home. She makes it all happen. Even now with this job, I I, I had a. So we live in New Jersey now because it's closer to the Fox studio. I'm down here five days a week. And in those first weeks, I was down here for, like, weeks on end.
- [36:36]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [36:37]
Sean Duffy
And she, she, she. She does Fox and Friends weekend. She does Noticias, which is a Spanish show, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And she's managing all the kids as I'm here doing the service at DOT and get. Get the great privilege of working in the administration and none of it happens, but for an amazing wife.
- [36:55]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [36:56]
Miranda Devine
And, I mean, you sacrificed your congressional career for the family. She also sacrificed, didn't she, back when you moved to Wisconsin. And she had a very promising television career ahead of her.
- [37:09]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [37:10]
Sean Duffy
So we. So, by the way, we both met on reality tv. I was going to get to that. So she did mtv, the Real World, the San Francisco season. So the young people, they probably don't know this, but us older people will. It was very popular. She did the San Francisco season with Puck and Pedro, and she was there. And I did a later season.
- [37:27]
Miranda Devine
That was one of the first reality TV shows, wasn't it? And what was the premise? You put a whole lot of young people in it.
- [37:33]
Sean Duffy
It was. It was the first reality TV show in America. And so what the premise was, they would take seven people from wildly different walks of life and make them live in a house together. And what they found out was, is you'll get drama, you'll get conflict, because we. We actually hang out with and. And associate with people who are very much like us.
- [37:53]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [37:53]
Sean Duffy
The same backgrounds, maybe, same philosophy. But if you make people live together who have nothing in common, you'll get great storylines. Yes. Which, by the way, what I found is I have way more in common with the people who I thought had so many things that I was separated from. I had way more in common with them, which was a great lesson.
- [38:09]
Miranda Devine
That's a good, good lesson.
- [38:10]
Sean Duffy
It is a really good lesson for a politician especially. And we had a lot, a lot more than I would have thought.
- [38:15]
Miranda Devine
You were in the Boston version.
- [38:16]
Sean Duffy
I was in the Boston version. So those seven people come together, they film for six months. It was a really popular show at the time. And then they had a secondary show, which was called Road Rules, where they put five people in a Winnebago and they traveled around and did missions across the country. What they decided to do is take one member from each of the prior Real World seasons and have those people come together and do Road Rules. And they picked her from her season Me from my season. And so I actually met her on tape.
- [38:43]
Miranda Devine
Wow.
- [38:44]
Sean Duffy
Right. So I. She got off a train.
- [38:45]
Miranda Devine
Remember the first.
- [38:46]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah, the first.
- [38:47]
Sean Duffy
Yeah, yeah. Because she and I have it on tape too. But she came off and she handed me her bag and she got off the train.
- [38:52]
Miranda Devine
And what did you think?
- [38:52]
Sean Duffy
I'm gonna carry her bag from now on. Right. Listen, she's. She was, listen, I was attracted to her right away.
- [38:59]
Miranda Devine
How old were you?
- [39:00]
Sean Duffy
I was 25. I tried my best effort. Listen, I had really bad hair and bad glasses and I'm from Wisconsin and I tried my best and I made some progress getting her to like me. And what happened is several months after the show, she was flying through Minneapolis where I was in law school. She'd done a speech in Milwaukee, had to fly through Minneapolis, and she decided she would stop over and see me and just make sure we're all good. And I picked up at the airport and I took her out to breakfast at the uptowner in St. Paul. And we sat there for probably two and a half hours or three hours. We had breakfast and had coffee. And at the end of it, Miranda, she's like, I'm gonna marry you. To which I was like, whoa, daddy, were you dating? No, no. She said she's gonna. Yeah, she's gonna marry me. And I was like, this is crazy.
- [39:50]
Miranda Devine
Why did she say that?
- [39:51]
Sean Duffy
I don't know. She. She said, you know what she said? I think lovers, people who, you know, they should be able to sit and have a cup of coffee for three hours. Like it's seamless. And we had that together. And that we can sit and do this is something special. She. She had a tragic car crash where everyone in all the cars died. She was the only one who survived. And I think that will probably change the way you think about life and marriage and what I'm doing.
- [40:14]
Miranda Devine
So that probably don't waste a moment.
- [40:16]
Sean Duffy
Don't waste a moment. And so, yeah, so that's. That's how. That, that's how.
- [40:21]
Miranda Devine
What was your reaction when she said, we're going to get married? Like you're a 25 year old man. Was that scary?
- [40:26]
Sean Duffy
Shocking? A little bit scary. A little bit like you're cray cray. But then you know what it was?
- [40:33]
Miranda Devine
How did you finish that breakfast?
- [40:36]
Sean Duffy
I. Did you bring me. I don't know if I had to bring her back to the airport or if she came back, but we.
- [40:42]
Miranda Devine
I don't want to talk about this.
- [40:43]
Sean Duffy
No, I was like, listen, I wanted to date her, you know, I didn't know that I wanted to marry her. I want to date her at that time. And so we. Yeah, then we dated ever since and we got married a. A year and a half after that. But to your original question, what happened was before we got married, the View was doing online on air live auditions.
- [41:03]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
- [41:04]
Sean Duffy
The same Barbara Walters was on at the time. They brought her to audition live on the show. And so she was doing like once a week coming on the View, and she was one of the finalists. And Lisa Ling ended up getting the show, but very promising. I mean, this was a huge. Yeah, like, challenge of who was going to get that seat.
- [41:25]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [41:25]
Miranda Devine
So she had, it was a hot show then.
- [41:27]
Sean Duffy
Hot show. And she was, her star was salivating. And we, by the way, at that time, we were like, where are we going to live? And so we made a deal where I said, if, if you get the, the View, I'll move to New York, which I was not interested in. I'm a small town, Wisconsin guy. But I said, if you don't get it, you got to come to Hayward, Wisconsin, size 2000 people. If you don't get it.
- [41:49]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [41:50]
Sean Duffy
And she ended up coming to Hayward, Wisconsin. We had a couple babies. She then went back and auditioned again on the View when Lisa Ling left and she did that. And at the end, Elizabeth Hasselbeck got the seat, but she had a. So. But there's a lot of stuff going on.
- [42:06]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [42:06]
Sean Duffy
What's interesting is she, she sacrificed her career.
- [42:10]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [42:10]
Sean Duffy
For my advancement.
- [42:11]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [42:12]
Sean Duffy
And I'm very grateful for that. I would not be. I would, I'm not being, I'm not being generous to her. I would not be here without her.
- [42:18]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [42:19]
Sean Duffy
And yeah, she was, again, very smart. And I think we complement each other. We have different skills. And so whether I was, when I was a da, When I, when I ran for Congress, I had just me and her. I like one consultant that I didn't pay that would help us. But it was me and her. I ran. It was crazy town and it could have never happened without the brilliance and intelligence that she has to help. Whether it's on the media side, on the commercial sides, on the, on the messaging side, op ed side, like, she was just really interested.
- [42:53]
Miranda Devine
She always seems to be very cheerful, very upbeat, very optimistic.
- [42:56]
Sean Duffy
She is. And what's happened, what's really interesting is since she helped judge my career and then after that her career has really taken off that Fox. And so when I left Congress, it was somewhat my time to go, okay, I'm going to be supportive I'm going to, I'm going to manage some of the family as you're able to pursue your dream. And if I'm gonna be. I'm gonna tell you this. And she might shoot me, but when she was like, I'm gonna do Fox and Friends, and I'm like, you're not gonna do Fox and Friends like you can't do. And she reminds me of that all the time. And of course she, she did it for the first time and she was great at it. And why did you think that she. Because I'd never seen it.
- [43:33]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah, right.
- [43:34]
Sean Duffy
I'd seen her do hits. Right. I'd seen her do the hits, but I never seen her actually host a show.
- [43:38]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah, right.
- [43:38]
Sean Duffy
Never in. Back in the day, I'd seen her do the, the View, but this was. But anyway, I hear about that a lot. But obviously she is, I think she's what her, her blessing is that she's, she doesn't really have a filter. That can be a blessing or a curse. She says what she thinks.
- [43:53]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [43:55]
Sean Duffy
The President. The president loves her too, because she. Not because she doesn't graciously give praise or support to people she doesn't believe in. And probably out of, out of almost everybody on tv, she has consistently been supportive of him. And even when he's not in the script or in the segment, she would bring him up because so many things, even after the 2020 election would revolve back to Trump.
- [44:23]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [44:23]
Sean Duffy
And I think he appreciated that from her.
- [44:25]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [44:26]
Sean Duffy
In her honesty and her honest support of what he had done and what he was doing and that he was going to come back and be the President again. Are you feeling more fulfilled now that you're back to work this Friday? No, I need a vacation. See the movie that critics are saying is an awesome look at that crowd pleasing, fist pumping, all out brawl of a film.
- [44:50]
Unnamed Guest
You're right about that.
- [44:53]
Miranda Devine
They're coming after our family.
- [44:56]
Unnamed Guest
Go fix this.
- [44:57]
Sean Duffy
Oh my God. Nobody. Two Rated R Only in theaters Friday.
- [45:04]
Miranda Devine
Power, politics and the people behind the headlines. I'm Miranda Devine, New York Post columnist and the host of the brand new podcast, podforce One. Every week I'll sit down for candid conversations with Washington's most powerful disruptors. Lawmakers, newsmakers, and even the President of the United States. These are the leaders shaping the future of America and the world. Listen to podforce one with me, Miranda Devine every week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You don't want to miss an episode. I was struck by a photograph that was taken in the Oval Office after you were sworn in.
- [45:53]
Unnamed Guest
Your.
- [45:54]
Miranda Devine
All your family was there, and there was little Valentina, your Down syndrome girl with the president. And he was so sweet to her. He seemed to really be struck by her.
- [46:02]
Sean Duffy
He, he, again, he's so good with, listen, he's, he, the, the president. It's a, it's very interactive. Right. And you have to be good with people.
- [46:12]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [46:13]
Sean Duffy
And people who don't have good personalities and good social intelligence, they'll never make it in that level of politics. And, yeah, he grabbed her, put her on his lap, and then we took the picture. So in President Trump's style, right. He has his hands up on the Resolute desk for the picture. And then she's standing right next to him and she sees his hands on the desk. And so my little Valentina is the one who has downs. She comes up alongside him, this little thing, and she puts her hands to the desk next to him, and we have this great picture of the two of them. Again, that's just who he is, I think, as a human being and as a president and by the way, as a friend. He's been really good to my family and to Rachel. But again, it goes back to. She has been able to do this and now have this great career and a job that she loves.
- [47:02]
Miranda Devine
How for both of you, you came from a family of 11. You're the 10th of 11, and she's shifted from a family of four, which was underachievers.
- [47:11]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [47:12]
Miranda Devine
So tell us about your upbringing, your childhood, and what it was like to be the 10th. I mean, were you forgotten and left to your own devices?
- [47:20]
Sean Duffy
So what I find is I, I will talk fast and try to get in.
- [47:23]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [47:23]
Sean Duffy
And it comes back to being a, a little boy in the family where you can't get a word in edgewise.
- [47:28]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [47:29]
Sean Duffy
And because I was the 10th, that's one of the issues that comes into play. But in any big family, in ours as well, the parents are far more stressed out with the older kids, and you're a new parent at that time, and you're not perfect and you make mistakes and. But as you get a little older and more experienced in parenting, you have one, you're a better parent, but also you have more time. Yes, my parents had more time with me. And I'll see that right now with. We have nine. I see that, too. I have more time than I did 20 years ago with, with the younger kids. But I listen, I grew up in small town, Wisconsin, I got to go to the lake in the summer. And again, not boats really, but we'd swim and we'd fish. I would go do lumberjack sports. I'd go to log roll.
- [48:15]
Miranda Devine
You were a bit of a superstar as a lumberjack.
- [48:17]
Sean Duffy
I was, I was. I won the 90 foot and 60 foot speed climbs, which is kind of the bull riding of the rodeo.
- [48:22]
Unnamed Guest
Wow.
- [48:23]
Sean Duffy
So we would. Yeah. But I, so, but I love these sports, but I do that in the summer.
- [48:26]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [48:27]
Sean Duffy
And then I played hockey in the winter and I just, I, I think there, it's. It was a, it was a wonderful upbringing. And I think there's something, again, someone, Someone who was raised in New York or in D.C. will say how wonderful that is, and I'm sure it is. I just really appreciate, especially for a.
- [48:42]
Miranda Devine
Boy, the kind of healthy outdoor stuff.
- [48:44]
Sean Duffy
Yeah. We go explore in the back of our house and there's a lot of room to run around.
- [48:49]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [48:50]
Sean Duffy
There's probably less concerns of all the bad things that were happening in cities around the country at that time versus rural America.
- [48:56]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [48:57]
Sean Duffy
And so again, you can open the door, by the way. We didn't lock our doors at night.
- [49:00]
Miranda Devine
Right.
- [49:01]
Sean Duffy
We left our keys in the car.
- [49:02]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [49:03]
Sean Duffy
You know. Yeah. People won't steal anything.
- [49:05]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [49:06]
Sean Duffy
So. Yeah. I love my upbringing.
- [49:08]
Miranda Devine
So your parents must have been amazing. I mean, your mom especially have 11 kids.
- [49:12]
Sean Duffy
She was fantastic. And she was a, she was a great athlete. And even after having 11 kids, she was. I just, we lost her last summer almost a year ago. Almost in the next couple days. Yes, she was, she was a remarkable woman. And.
- [49:27]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [49:27]
Sean Duffy
And my. I think my wife had a different affection for her. My mom, after she had nine kids and she goes like, you know, I now know what your mom did. And listen, it's never perfect and some kids will complain and some of it wasn't perfect. You get all that. But I think there was a bond there. When you have a lot of kids and you have to manage it and.
- [49:46]
Miranda Devine
What'S the advantages for you of being one of a big family? And I guess you've given that to your kids. You must have liked it.
- [49:53]
Sean Duffy
I think a. I'm a good compromiser. I think I know how to.
- [49:59]
Miranda Devine
Humility, maybe.
- [50:00]
Sean Duffy
Yeah. I know how to communicate.
- [50:01]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [50:02]
Sean Duffy
I, yeah. But the human. I don't. I, I don't do well with arrogance with people around me or. I, I don't, I don't think it's. I don't think it serves people well. Yeah. So I like humble people. I like honest People.
- [50:14]
Miranda Devine
And so does it give you confidence, social intelligence?
- [50:19]
Sean Duffy
I think social intelligence more than confidence.
- [50:21]
Miranda Devine
Why is that?
- [50:22]
Sean Duffy
Because you need, you need to know how to navigate people, navigate your family. And you started very young.
- [50:26]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [50:26]
Sean Duffy
And competition. Well, also, how do. There's, it's your comp. You're competing for attention, you're competing for food, you're competing for. And you have to learn how to navigate that at a very early age. And so I think social intelligence has been helpful. And it was. I was able to get extra help from my, my, my parents. I was able to do more things with my parents because of, of where I was. And so again, I think even, even in life, I think they taught me. I failed a lot. I truly did. I was, when I was tree climbing, I wanted to be a great tree climber. I was not good. I worked really hard at it and I ended up winning. When I became a prosecutor and a lawyer, I did a number of trials and Miranda, I was, I was horrible. It was not good. It was embarrassingly bad, but I knew that I had to learn how to do this.
- [51:20]
Miranda Devine
And you were a da?
- [51:22]
Sean Duffy
Yep. Yeah, before I was, I was, I was in private practice before I was a DA And I did a couple mental commitment trials, which. They're bad. Some of my first DA trials. Not good.
- [51:33]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
- [51:33]
Miranda Devine
What's a mental commitment trial?
- [51:34]
Sean Duffy
So if someone is alleged to have a mental disease or defect, they have a right to a jury trial. State six person jury trial. So are you going to commit someone?
- [51:41]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
- [51:42]
Sean Duffy
You're entitled to a trial.
- [51:43]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [51:43]
Sean Duffy
Before you have a forced commitment.
- [51:44]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [51:45]
Sean Duffy
But I spent the time on it. When I left, I was one of the better, one of the best prosecutors in my region. And the skill set I learned because I didn't give up after having such failure.
- [51:54]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [51:54]
Sean Duffy
Was the skills I learned helped me run for Congress. You have to think on your feet. You have to be able to communicate, you have to, you know, be able to respond to questions. So again, I think a lot of times today people are. Our kids fail and they quit or they're, or they're afraid of failures. They don't try. And I think, and I don't know what your experience is, but I think trying to do big things and not being afraid to fail is okay. You can, you, you can, you cannot be successful and just be. But what's key is what do I learn and do I come back.
- [52:25]
Miranda Devine
Everyone fails.
- [52:26]
Sean Duffy
At some point, everyone fails. And if you don't, you got a problem.
- [52:29]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [52:30]
Sean Duffy
Right. It's almost like a Marriage. Right. I hear some married couples go, like me, my spouse, we never fight. I'm like, oh, that's a problem. You should fight.
- [52:38]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [52:39]
Sean Duffy
And again, you should work through your problems. Otherwise you just ball it all up. And then there's explosions and divorces. I mean, you got to fight and you got to fail. And that's how you, I think, become successful.
- [52:50]
Miranda Devine
And your Catholic faith, you were brought up in a Catholic family, and how important's your Catholic faith been?
- [52:57]
Sean Duffy
Well, I, so growing up, I was the 10th of 11, as you mentioned, so we were Catholics.
- [53:02]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [53:03]
Sean Duffy
We went to church every Sunday.
- [53:04]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [53:05]
Sean Duffy
And then for us, Listen, I, you know, we go to church every Sunday. I'm a Catholic. We have nine kids. We follow the, the teachings of the Catholic Church. By the way, I, I, I think there's no greater joy. Again, I'm not gonna say it's easy. Yeah, kids can be hard. Listen, it takes money and time. And I don't sit back on a Saturday afternoon and, you know, go get lattes and, you know, I don't go to Florida and vacations on the weekend.
- [53:31]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [53:32]
Sean Duffy
I wouldn't trade any of that for having, you know, this little brood of kids.
- [53:36]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [53:37]
Sean Duffy
And I, Yeah, I think having kids, getting married young, having kids, that is the joy that you'll have in your life. If you, if you actually do that.
- [53:45]
Miranda Devine
How do you, with that big family, how do you actually manage to get on a plane or, you know, travel around the country?
- [53:52]
Sean Duffy
So, by the way, we are going to do so. So the president has tasked all the departments with, with Celebrating America 250.
- [53:58]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [53:59]
Sean Duffy
So at dot, we are going to do the great American road trip. We have ours coming. Our first one we're going to do next month, but we have a lot of things that are going to happen around it. We want, Listen, what's great is, think back to your childhoods. So many people went on road trips with their parents.
- [54:13]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [54:13]
Sean Duffy
And there's whether you just went camping for a weekend or you drove to Florida or, you know, you went to the Wisconsin Dells. The road trip was such a great experience. And maybe in the moment, you're fighting and you're hitting each other and don't touch me. But as you think back on those, it's like these were the, these are great family moments. And I think it.
- [54:29]
Miranda Devine
Trapped in a car for hours, and.
- [54:32]
Sean Duffy
Now there's all these phones.
- [54:33]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [54:33]
Sean Duffy
And it's the time that if you can get your kids to put the phone down and bond together, it's just, and by the way, our country is so beautiful. Pick places to go see. So we want to encourage people to do the road trip. But for us it's helpful when you have so many. The older ones, sons are really helpful with the younger ones.
- [54:51]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [54:51]
Sean Duffy
That it, you could, I couldn't take, you know, I couldn't take 95 year olds on a plane. Right.
- [54:56]
Miranda Devine
How old's your oldest?
- [54:57]
Sean Duffy
25.
- [54:57]
Miranda Devine
25.
- [54:58]
Sean Duffy
So I'm 25. Valentina is five.
- [55:00]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
- [55:00]
Sean Duffy
My oldest two are, are married and so, and in a car. So I have a Suburban and I wasn't going to get a big Catholic band. I don't know what those are. But people move. So people move. Right.
- [55:12]
Miranda Devine
So how many can you fit in that?
- [55:13]
Sean Duffy
So I can fit. I have a bench seat. So I can fit. Eight.
- [55:17]
Miranda Devine
Eight, Right.
- [55:17]
Sean Duffy
So I can't fit us all.
- [55:19]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [55:19]
Sean Duffy
And so sometimes when everyone's home, I'll, I'll have to take two cars. If we go to church over Christmas. Yeah, we take two cars to church.
- [55:25]
Miranda Devine
And then you've got another husbands and the.
- [55:27]
Sean Duffy
Yeah, they come along.
- [55:28]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [55:29]
Sean Duffy
So we're. So we're 11 total. Then add a couple spouses in there with 13. Yeah, so yeah, we, we. But by the way, if, if you buy an airline ticket and it's like, you know, $30 price difference, not a big deal. If you're going to buy, if I'm on the hook to buy all the tickets. Well, you know, a $30 price difference is $330 difference or, or $100 difference in prices. All you start to talk about real money when you start to buy so many tickets. And we don't do it all the time, but we've, we got a couple trips we went, we went to, a few of us went. My daughter was in, in Italy last year and we went to the Vatican and.
- [56:07]
Miranda Devine
Yeah, that must have been amazing.
- [56:09]
Sean Duffy
It was fun.
- [56:09]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [56:10]
Sean Duffy
And, but they're good travelers. They're good travelers and, and they're interested in seeing the world whenever we can take them.
- [56:17]
Miranda Devine
Well, now I'll just ask you two last questions. One is NASA the president give a busy man a job. You've now been tasked with running NASA as well.
- [56:26]
Sean Duffy
Yeah.
- [56:27]
Miranda Devine
What are you doing about that? And is there anything exciting on the, on the horizon?
- [56:31]
Sean Duffy
So I just had my first official day yesterday, which I testified in the house, at the house for four and a half hours. So I went and visited it last week. I'm going over tomorrow. Kenti. So everyone in America knows what the Apollo program was. We were going to go to the moon.
- [56:50]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [56:51]
Sean Duffy
No one knows what the Artemis program is. We want to go back to the moon. We want to set up a base there, keep people on the moon. And there's actually. We have ice on the moon. It's actually very real.
- [57:04]
Miranda Devine
Command water and live there properly.
- [57:06]
Sean Duffy
That's right. And then from there what we learn will help us go to Mars. And so that's a really. How that's structured, how we do it is really important. The funding that it's going to take to make that happen and I guess.
- [57:19]
Miranda Devine
Exciting the American people about it because no one, as you said, has heard of Artemis.
- [57:24]
Sean Duffy
They need to know about it. Someone has to sell it.
- [57:26]
Miranda Devine
So living on the moon.
- [57:28]
Sean Duffy
Living on the moon, that's right. We have a base camp on the moon. It's. And again, so I think that's, that's an important part because no one knows what we're trying to do. Yeah, we're going to need a new space station. How we're going to do that. Ours is in 2030, 2031, the International Space Station is going to come down. So some big things. But what I'm going to do is I gotta, I have to get in and start having a lot of conversations and a lot of briefings because NASA's.
- [57:54]
Miranda Devine
Kind of, it's gone downhill since the Challenger disaster, really, hasn't it? And outsourced a lot. Elon Musk saved those astronauts or brought them back anyway because NASA couldn't.
- [58:04]
Sean Duffy
Well, I think what's interesting is the commercial space component in America, whether it's Blue Origin or Space X or there's a lot of others. Yeah, they're doing things way more cost effectively and efficiently than NASA would. If it's a NASA.
- [58:18]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [58:19]
Sean Duffy
Project. And that's again, we have to have those partners. And so I think NASA can, does a lot, can do a lot of the funding. But how do we, if we're going to actually be successful at this mission? You can't have each mission cost $5 billion. You don't have to take 10, 15. I mean, you have tons of missions. Yes, the taxpayers are going to say no. If we can get it down like what Elon has done. And this is. We want massive competition. We want a lot of, a lot of companies involved. But what he has done with SpaceX and he's cut cost dramatically on what it takes to get satellites or people into space. We want to see that same kind of corporate engagement and that same kind of involvement at NASA. And so, and so here's what's important? You're like, well, what do you do? NASA? What do you mean? Yeah, you need a secretary who's been Senate confirmed to make the decisions. If we wait six, eight months for an administrator, they'll wait six or eight months to make decisions, which means we're six to eight months behind those who are competing with us to get to the moon. And so that's. Yes. Yeah, that's right. And so that's the purpose to.
- [59:32]
Miranda Devine
So it's really a national security issue.
- [59:34]
Sean Duffy
100%.
- [59:35]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [59:35]
Sean Duffy
And this is 100% a national security issue. The space is peace, but people can use it for nefarious purposes. And I think it's important that we continue to lead. But it takes vision. You got to sell the American people on it.
- [59:49]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
- [59:51]
Miranda Devine
Because people are bored now.
- [59:52]
Sean Duffy
They are bored. But if you look back when, when, when Elon brought the astronauts back, we had two days of wall to wall coverage of what was going to happen. And my, my complaint to NASA was everybody was watching what was happening. Who went out and sold Artemis.
- [60:06]
Miranda Devine
Yes.
- [60:06]
Sean Duffy
And sold the vision of NASA. Like, I didn't hear, I didn't hear any of that. Like, let's sell it.
- [60:11]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [60:11]
Sean Duffy
And if the American people agree, like you're going to get the money for it. If they don't agree, the program will die. But they should know what, what we're, what we're doing there. And so that's, I'm going to, part of the mission is to sell the vision of where we're going and why are we going. Right. We're, we're, we are explorers. Right. Americans are.
- [60:29]
Unnamed Guest
Yes.
- [60:30]
Sean Duffy
That's in our blood. It's in our heart.
- [60:31]
Miranda Devine
Frontier.
- [60:32]
Sean Duffy
It is. And I think who controls space is going to control Earth. And so we have to make sure we continue to make advancements. And so, so for me, I'm honored that the President would have given me the privilege and the honor to take NASA for this short time and make sure we're making the right decisions to keep these programs moving and so we don't fall behind.
- [60:52]
Miranda Devine
That's exciting. Last question. I ask everybody this and you yourself are successful. And you're around and met and interviewed a lot of successful people. What is the secret to people being successful?
- [61:05]
Sean Duffy
Kind of. I'm gonna go back to what I said before, which is I think if, if your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough. Right. You need to have big dreams. You have to work hard. I think a lot of people think that you can be successful and you know, just cut. Just. Some people are lucky and some people aren't. No, there's. You have to work hard at your success and then you can't be afraid to fail. I have failed time and time again. And sometimes it's embarrassing, like, and sometimes it's public feeling, but you got to get back on your horse and you got to ride and you got to push through. And I think if you do that, you try really hard and, and you're not afraid to fail. And you have big dreams, you will, you'll be successful. And one of the things I think sometimes for young people, they, they have a, they have an idea of what they want to be. I want to be a pilot. My dad was like, no, I don't think you should be a pilot. I flew model airplanes when I was young. I love airplanes.
- [62:01]
Unnamed Guest
Look at you now.
- [62:03]
Sean Duffy
I came back full circle and I get the FAA and NASA. But I do think you have to be open to changing. You know, what do I want to do? You can't lock into that eight year old's dream. It's okay to change course and think about what you're passionate about. And I also think like, you going to work and loving what you do is not work. Yes, it was part of life, but it's like to love what you do as opposed to being in the grind, like watching the clock and like, when can I retire? And I think finding a space that can make you happy, can satisfy you and gives you joy in your work is more important than the money you make off it.
- [62:42]
Miranda Devine
Thank you very much, Secretary Duffy.
- [62:43]
Sean Duffy
Great to you. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.
- [62:47]
Miranda Devine
Thank you for joining us at Podcast Force One. I'm Miranda Devine. Please don't forget to like and subscribe.