Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Rails Against Men in Spandex
“Women in spandex—beautiful,” Duffy said. “Men, not so much.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, still grappling with a series of air traffic control outages that have disrupted U.S. airspace in recent weeks, took a detour Tuesday—into fashion policing.
“I don’t think men in spandex look good at all, I’m sorry to the guys that bike” Duffy said on the conservative Ruthless podcast, wading into MAGA’s favorite fixation: masculinity.
“Women in spandex—beautiful,” added the married father of nine, drawing raucous laughter from the show’s all-male hosts. “Men, not so much, right?”
J.D. Vance has said that to him, "the essence of masculinity" is "telling jokes" to his "guy friends."
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Duffy, a former Fox Business TV host, is the latest MAGA figure to lay down edicts on “manliness.” In March, Fox News host Jesse Watters unveiled his five “rules for men”—among them: no crossing your legs, no soup in public, and no straws (pursing your lips is apparently too “effeminate”).
Vice President J.D. Vance has also tried to join the conversation, lamenting in February that “our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge.”
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“My message to young men is don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends, or because you’re competitive,” he said.
When stocks plunged in April after President Donald Trump rolled out his “Liberation Day” tariffs, The Free Press columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon argued that his trade war would ultimately alleviate America’s “crisis in masculinity” by reviving jobs that depend on “brawn and physicality.”
Duffy aired his spandex critique while talking with the Ruthless podcast hosts about his predecessor at the department, Pete Buttigieg—who famously rode his bike to work and whom Duffy has repeatedly tried to pin recent air traffic control meltdowns on.
The Trump administration has proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the country’s troubled air traffic control system, calling for six new control centers and tech upgrades at all air traffic facilities nationwide.
Duffy is also scrambling to address a nationwide staffing crisis at the Federal Aviation Agency, but progress has been hampered by Elon Musk the Trump administration’s own deferred-resignation program, which has resulted in more than 1,200 employees exiting the agency.
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