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The campaign for Rep. Andy Barr’s U.S. Senate run has undergone a significant change as his campaign manager, Blake Gober, has been dismissed following a revealing report by Breitbart News. The report accused Gober of having an extreme case of what it termed “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Blake Gober, who had been managing Barr’s campaign since January, was let go in the aftermath of the intense scrutiny brought on by the Breitbart News article.
“We parted ways with Blake last week,” stated Alex Bellizzi, spokesperson for Barr’s campaign, in a comment to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
A prominent element of the election is Barr’s close alliance with former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose Senate seat is up for grabs. Barr’s stance on issues like open borders and amnesty has attracted attention, and he has referred to McConnell as his “mentor.” Meanwhile, former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has also maintained a strong connection with McConnell, contrasting with businessman Nate Morris, who has positioned himself against the McConnell political influence in Kentucky.
Austin Horn, writing for the newspaper, confirmed that Gober’s firing followed the publication of the Breitbart News story.
“Criticism of Gober from many on the right came after a report from Breitbart, a conservative outlet that has boosted Morris, about several posts on X, formerly Twitter, criticizing Trump,” Horn wrote.
The explosive Breitbart News investigation uncovered years and years of Trump hatred from the man Barr picked as his campaign manager. Dating back to before the 2016 election and carrying through until just before the 2024 election—when he changed his mind and finally did end up voting for Trump—Gober spent the better part of nearly a decade nonstop trying to deter the president and move the Republican Party back to a party dominated by globalists like George W. Bush.
Since Barr fired Gober over this particular story and these revelations, there are several questions that remain unanswered from the first story that Breitbart News published on this.
As Breitbart News reported last week in that original story, several questions that Barr himself refuses to answer include:
- Did you vet Blake Gober before you hired him?
- Were you aware of all these Never Trump declarations from the man you named campaign manager when you hired him? If so, why did you do so? If not, why should voters trust you to represent them in the U.S. Senate if you cannot vet your own staff?
- Do you agree with Mr. Gober’s various pledges to oppose President Trump at every turn for years on end?
- Are there other people on your campaign staff or in your office staff who have pledged allegiance to the #NeverTrump movement? If so, who? If not, how do you know that? What processes have you conducted to vet the others?
- Have you informed President Trump about these various comments from your campaign manager or are you hiding this information from the president?
All of the posts in question were public on Gober’s social media accounts when Barr hired Gober and when Breitbart News reported the story on his Trump Derangement Syndrome.
So either Barr knew and was okay with that content when he hired Gober, or Barr demonstrated he did not conduct the most basic vetting of senior staff—a major flaw for a politician, and perhaps even more disqualifying than if he had known and decided he was okay with the content of Gober’s messages at the time of his hiring until such time as Breitbart News unearthed the messages when Barr reversed course and terminated Gober.