You’ve probably heard about this profile of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy published today by the NY Times. There’s no scandal here, just the usual Gorillas In the Mist approach to people who come from a social background very different from that of the average NY Times reader.
Over three decades, Americans have watched him evolve from a sex-hungry 25-year-old on MTV’s “The Real World,” gyrating with a woman on a pool table, to Secretary Duffy, a devoutly Catholic husband and father at the helm of President Trump’s Transportation Department, pushing young Americans to have families as large as his own. Mr. Duffy and his wife, the Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy, like to call themselves “the longest-lasting (and most fertile) couple in the history of reality TV,” a title they trace to a mid-2000s issue of TV Guide.
With his ascension to Mr. Trump’s cabinet, Mr. Duffy and his wife, whom he met during one of his three seasons on MTV, have now positioned themselves as the poster family for the administration’s agenda to raise the birthrate and promote a conservative view of traditional family values. While the Duffys say the left has embraced a childless existence of matcha lattes and urban farmers markets, they present their way of life — marriage, pancakes and many children — as a far more fulfilling alternative.
“If you make the decision of a big family, I think your kids are better, I think you’re better,” Mr. Duffy, the 10th child in a family of 11, said in a 2023 episode of the Fox podcast he co-hosted with his wife…
For years, Mr. Duffy — who declined to comment for this story — put his life as a dad on display to win Wisconsin voters. Now he is using his Insta-ready family to send a message to young, single people across the country.
“If you want to be happy, if you want to be successful, you want to have children,” Mr. Duffy said on the couple’s podcast in 2023.
There really isn’t much to it apart from the assumptions and judgments most Times’ readers will be bringing to it. Duffy’s daughter had this to say.
The NYT just published a hit piece on my family, accusing my dad of using us as political props for his career. The writer, Caroline Kitchener, is an abortion reporter who now claims to be a “family” journalist. But it’s clear she hates family, given how much the size of ours… pic.twitter.com/AkiicQXodp
— Evita Duffy-Alfonso (@evitaduffy_1) June 23, 2025
But it’s clear she hates family, given how much the size of ours disturbs her. One of the deranged questions she bombarded my parents with was if they considered aborting their first child — me. The truth is simple: we’re not a prop, a brand, or some act. We’re a real, loving, faithful, joyful family — and @CAKitchener is bitter and a creep.
Here’s Sec. Duffy’s response:
With all the serious issues facing our country, the New York Times decided to dispatch a former abortion correspondent (cosplaying now as a “family” expert) for a hit piece on me and the Trump administration.
NYT reporter @CAKitchener is genuinely disturbed that I’m happily… pic.twitter.com/wrNTMFoK42
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) June 23, 2025
NYT reporter @CAKitchener is genuinely disturbed that I’m happily married, have nine kids, and—brace yourself—didn’t abort any of them. Among the hard-hitting questions she harassed my team with: did I consider aborting one of my daughters, what color plaid my siblings and I wore as children, whether I drive a minivan, and bizarre fact-checks on an old reality show. Pulitzer stuff, truly.
Let the NYT goof off. I’m laser focused on making transportation great again—modernizing air traffic control, rebuilding bridges, and reviving U.S. commercial shipping through a reinvigorated Merchant Marine Academy. While they obsess over my beautiful family, I’m working for yours.
Apparently that story wasn’t enough on the topic of Republicans and big families for the Times. They have another story up today titled “‘Less Burnout, More Babies’: How Conservatives Are Winning Young Women.” Different author but it feels like the same game plan aimed at conservatives more generally.
“I’ll tell you this ladies,” said Dana Loesch, former spokeswoman of the National Rifle Association, as she paced the stage of a Dallas ballroom. “You cannot have it all — at the same time. Something will suffer.”
The audience of roughly 3,000 young women listened, rapt. They wore pins that read “Dump your socialist boyfriend” and “My favorite season is the fall of feminism.” In ruffled sundresses and cowboy boots, they shimmied to the “Church Clap.” When Ms. Loesch stepped off the stage, and out came Trump World rock stars Charlie and Erika Kirk, the young women came up to the microphone one by one to ask for advice — on finding a husband, on raising Christian children, on what to tell friends who judged them for wanting to marry young…
It was the largest young conservative women’s event in the country, hosted by Turning Point USA, the organization Mr. Kirk leads that claimed a critical role in turning out young voters for President Trump. Most attendees had come to the Young Women’s Leadership Summit not so much for advice on how to lead, but how to live. Because sure, the personal is political — but it’s also practical, palatable. They got clear marching orders. “Less Prozac, more protein,” said Alex Clark, a wellness influencer and podcast host who headlined the weekend. “Less burnout, more babies, less feminism, more femininity.”…
Many of the young women at the Turning Point conference were drawn to the event because conservative women influencers had helped them remake their lives: start dating seriously and stop eating ultra-processed foods, start taking supplements and stop using birth control. The Young Women’s Leadership Summit, which marked its tenth anniversary, drew its largest numbers yet this year: roughly 3,000 women, up from around 2,000 last year and under 500 in 2015, at its inception. The event, some attendees noted, was light on discussions about policy — immigration raids, trade wars — but heavy on dating, parenting and nutrition advice.
This sounds to me a lot like a female version of the sort of thing Jordan Peterson was presenting to mostly male audiences a few years ago (and still is today). He was giving advice and encouragement to young men which mostly seemed productive and common sense and he was hated for it. The NY Times, among many others, gave him the Elon Musk treatment, presenting him as an extremist rather than someone trying to give young men some meaningful direction.
Nature abhors a vacuum. My own take on this is that the left has become so extreme they’ve created a vacuum of common sense for a lot of people who aren’t willing to join them. That has created space for people like the Duffy family and Charlie Kirk to present an alternative. There’s nothing wrong with that. As always, the left starts from the right’s reaction to left-wing extremism and tries to make that the story instead of the actual extremism that prompted it.
Anyway, the NY Times seems to have put out a memo about covering this topic (the conservative womanosphere) in a way that doesn’t add much to the conversation in my view. Maybe some future installments will be a bit less condescending than these two articles, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
