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Sean Duffy, Donald Trump's unexpected pick for interim NASA chief: Once a reality TV star
Donald Trump withdrew Jared Isaacman’s nomination in May, citing review of his ‘prior associations’; Elon Musk had backed Isaacman for the NASA post
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday gave his secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, an additional responsibility to serve as the interim administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Though the NASA administrator role has remained vacant since Trump withdrew his initial nominee, tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, Duffy’s appointment still comes as a bolt out of the blue.
The Republican leader made the announcement on Wednesday through a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
According to Donald Trump, Sean Duffy will be "a fantastic leader of the ever-more important Space Agency, even if only for a short period of time."
Before Duffy's appointment to the post, Donald Trump withdrew Jared Isaacman’s nomination in May, citing a review of his “prior associations.”
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose feud with Trump has been making waves since late May, had backed Isaacman for the post.
Know Sean Duffy: Stints include MTV, US Congress
Born on October 3, 1971, Sean Duffy is a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin. His resume also includes stints as a lumberjack athlete, reality TV star, prosecutor and Fox News host.
Duffy began his career in the public eye when he featured on MTV’s ‘The Real World: Boston’ in 1997.
He also worked in MTV’s ‘Road Rules: All Stars’, where he met his wife and future ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy in 1998. He has nine kids.
Duffy then went on to become a special prosecutor and later the district attorney of Ashland County in northern Wisconsin.
He entered the US Congress on a Republican ticket in 2010, riding the Tea Party wave.
His advertisement, showing him as a lumberjack, became pretty famous and featured him saying that he would take his axe to Washington.
In his nine-year stint in Congress, Duffy served on the Financial Services Committee and was the chair of the subcommittee on insurance and housing.
In 2019, he quit Congress to become a contributor to Fox News before being picked by Donald Trump as his transportation secretary in the second term that began in January 2025.
