Reality Star Transportation Secretary Suggests People Dressing Up Will Fix Nightmare Air Travel Experience

Welcome back to Barf Bag.

Ahead of a busy holiday travel season, Trump’s Secretary of Transportation has some advice: If you slobs stopped wearing sweatpants, maybe airports would be less hellacious.

That was the takeaway from The Real World: Boston alumna Sean Duffy in a Wednesday interview on Fox Business.

“People dress up like they’re going to bed when they fly,” Duffy said. “I see people get on airplanes and they’re having a hard time taking their luggage and getting it in the…overhead bin. Help people out, be nice, be courteous. We want to push people as we come into a really busy travel season: help people out, be in a good mood, dress up. Bring civility back to travel.”

Well, Sean, it’s kind of hard to be in a good mood when your flight’s been delayed several hours and you know you’re about to be squished into increasingly tinier seats on increasingly full flights because airlines are trying to extract the most profits possible for their shareholders and executives. Oh, and the administration in which you serve just presided over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which led to shortages in air traffic controllers and canceled flights, and airlines were only allowed to only to resume their regular schedules THIS WEEK. Somehow, I don’t think wearing a fancier outfit is going to make people be less cranky about all of that.

Trump's Transportation Secretary on how to improve air travel:"People dress up like they're going to bed when they fly… We want to push people as we come into a really busy travel season, help people out, be in a good mood, dress up"

— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) 2025-11-20T15:06:24.080023065Z

The morning of this ridiculous interview, the Department of Transportation launched a new “civility campaign” that it’s calling “The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You.” DOT says the campaign is intended to address a “record surge in unruly passengers disrupting travel for millions of Americans.”

Secretary Duffy posed a few key questions every flyer should ask themselves this holiday season to help Americans reach their destinations as quickly, efficiently and comfortably as possible:

1. Are you helping a pregnant woman or the elderly with placing their bags in the overhead bin?
2. Are you dressing with respect?
3. Are you keeping control of your children and helping them through the airport?
4. Are you saying thank you to your flight attendants?
5. Are you saying please and thank you in general?

Now, flight attendants have been dealing with increased amounts of bullshit and violence over the last five years, and people who are able should help other folks with their luggage. But again, what do my hoodie and running sneakers have to do with that?

Kindly fuck off, Sean.

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One more thought on Trump suggesting some Democrats be executed for reminding service members they should ignore illegal orders:

Well ok except for that one time

— Gillian Branstetter (@gbbranstetter.bsky.social) 2025-11-20T18:49:57.887Z

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its website to claim that vaccines may cause autism, in part because studies can’t prove there’s no link. That’s not how science works! Horrific stuff that will get people killed.

We can laugh about how stupid this is, but at the end of the day, a not-insignificant number of parents will believe the CDC and refuse to vaccinate. And some of their children will die because of it.www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safe…

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) 2025-11-20T14:32:15.810Z

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God, so much more barf:

• While Trump did sign the bill to release the Epstein Files on Wednesday, there’s a huge carveout that the Justice Department can withhold documents related to ongoing investigations. Recall that DOJ opened a new investigation last week at Trump’s urging. [Associated Press]
• The Coast Guard will stop classifying swastikas and nooses as hate symbols and instead deem them as “potentially divisive.” Seems bad! [Washington Post]
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation spied on a Signal group chat of immigration activists in New York. [The Guardian]
• “First Buddy” Elon Musk is back in Trump’s orbit to help bail out Republicans for the midterms. [New York Times]
• More than 600 people have been either fired, suspended, or investigated for comments they made in the wake of Charlie Kirk‘s assassination. [Reuters]
• The Justice Department claims that an ICE detention center outside Chicago lost nearly two weeks of surveillance footage the day after it was sued for allegedly abusing detainees. It blamed a “system crash.” [404 Media]
• Headline: “Border Patrol is monitoring U.S. drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns.” [Associated Press]
• Another headline: “Pardoned Capitol Rioter Tried to Hush Child Sex Victim With Promise of Jan. 6 Reparation Money, Police Say” [The Intercept]
• A former staffer for Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) was charged after allegedly faking a violent political attack on her. Natalie Greene reportedly paid a body modification artist to make it appear she’d been slashed. [The Handbasket/NBC News]
• A man with the initials JD Vance was sentenced to prison for threatening Vice President J.D. Vance. Prosecutors allege that James Donald Vance Jr. also threatened Trump. [New York Times]
• Neither Trump nor Vance was reportedly invited to Vice President Dick Cheney’s funeral. May he rest in piss. [People]

This has been your Friday Barf Bag, thanks for reading!