Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), a U.S. Senate candidate in Kentucky who is aligned with outgoing longtime Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), is presenting himself to Kentucky voters as someone who opposes “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) initiatives but a closer look at his voting record shows that for years he has helped support installing DEI programs across the government and private sector, most notably at the Pentagon.
Barr is one of two candidates aligned with McConnell seeking the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in Kentucky next year. The other is former Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who lost the governor race in 2023 to Democrat Andy Beshear despite having an endorsement at the time from President Donald Trump. A third candidate in the race, businessman Nate Morris, is aligned with Trump and his team and family, and as Breitbart News has repeatedly reported has infuriated the GOP establishment in Kentucky since his entrance into the fray.
Barr, a longtime Congressman who serves on the House Financial Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, entered the race himself back in April. In his opening ad upon entering the race, he presents himself as opposed to DEI. “The woke left wants to neuter America, literally,” Barr says in the first 10 seconds of the ad. “They hate our values, they hate our history, and goodness knows they hate President Trump.”
Later in the two-minute video, Barr says: “My plan for these insane DEI initiatives is pretty simple: D-I-E.” While he says this, on screen appears text reading: “End Radical DEI Programs.”
Barr has made this such a centerpiece of his Senate campaign that as recently as late August his staff was blasting out text messages to any Kentuckian he could, saying this: “Andy Barr says it best – it’s time for D-E-I to D-I-E! Andy Barr will stop the radical woke agenda and protect our conservative values in the Senate.”
But there’s some incredible hypocrisy going on here with Barr and his campaign for Senate making these claims repeatedly. His voting record in Congress shows he is very much on the other side of these issues.
In fact, Barr voted for multiple different National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bills that contained serious woke DEI policies for the U.S. military, including for the creation of a chief diversity officer at the Pentagon and the renaming of U.S. military bases to erase key moments from U.S. history. At least one of the plans that Barr voted for was so bad that, at the end of his first term in the White House back in late 2020, President Donald Trump vetoed the NDAA in part because of the woke insanity that Barr supported in it. It was so bad that many conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) ripped the plan as having been focused on “Democrat priorities.”
“This bill includes a host of partisan Democrat priorities unrelated to national security…like requiring the Department of Defense to rename military bases in a brazenly political attempt to erase our nation’s history,” Cruz said at the time.
Trump, in his official message vetoing the bill in late 2020 post-election, ripped it as well.
“My Administration respects the legacy of the millions of American servicemen and women who have served with honor at these military bases,” Trump said, adding: “I have been clear in my opposition to politically motivated attempts like this to wash away history and to dishonor the immense progress our country has fought for in realizing our founding principles.”
But, on Dec. 8, 2020, when Democrat Nancy Pelosi was still Speaker of the House, House clerk records show that Barr was one of many members of Congress to vote for the NDAA. The bill did have broad support, passing with 335 votes in favor—140 Republicans and 195 Democrats—but the fact that Barr voted for this was particularly interesting given what was contained in it.
The bill text shows that the word “diversity” appears at least 108 times across 39 pages of the 1,481-page bill. Even just a casual reading of the legislation—it’s unclear if Barr even read the bill before he voted for it, as the congressman has not agreed to an interview to defend his actions in office like voting for this legislation—shows just how steeped this legislation was in woke ideology. Right off the bat, in the title pages, it becomes abundantly clear this bill would install a ton of woke at the Pentagon. It even has a whole subtitle section–available on page 7—for “Diversity and Inclusion.”
The bill that Barr voted for even created a “chief diversity officer” at the Pentagon, to be appointed by the Secretary of Defense. “The Chief Diversity Officer shall be appointed from among persons who have an extensive management or business background and experience with diversity and inclusion,” section 913 of the legislation that Barr voted for reads, in part. “A person may not be appointed as Chief Diversity Officer within three years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force.”
The bill also required under federal law the creation of a commission to rename U.S. military bases. “The Secretary of Defense shall establish a commission relating to assigning, modifying, or removing of names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia to assets of the Department of Defense that commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America,” the bill text that Barr voted for reads.
Trump vetoed the bill in one of his final acts in his first term, but the Democrat-controlled U.S. House and the U.S. Senate—which was led at the time by McConnell—moved to override Trump’s veto. Congress successfully overrode Trump’s veto, but Barr did not show up to the vote per House clerk records, so he avoided being on record on that question either way.
Later, in the final months of 2021 when Biden was president and Pelosi was Speaker and Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate as well, Barr again joined the Democrats in voting for an NDAA which was even more woke and even more pro-DEI in the military than the first one he voted for against Trump. It was so much more woke that after Barr voted for it, Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee blasted out a press release celebrating the Barr-backed Biden-era DEI-packed NDAA as a bill that “invests in America’s rich pool of diverse talent to meet our biggest national security challenges.”
The Democrat release celebrated the bill Barr voted for as one that updated what it said were “outdated diversity training requirements,” and required “each Service Secretary to conduct ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training programs, including training on racism, discrimination, harassment, reprisal, and more.”
The bill also represented a sharp 27 percent—or more than $20 million–increase in DEI spending at the Pentagon over the previous year, per later CBS reports.
It’s unclear if Barr even read the bill before voting for it, because again he refused to answer questions about it for this story, but it’s not like the woke DEI stuff contained in it was some kind of secret. Conservatives in the House like Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) were aware of how woke it was and blasted it before the vote.
“After much consideration, I am going to vote no on the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, and you need to know why,” Boebert said in a press release before the vote in September 2021. “I love our military. I’m grateful for their service and sacrifice. Our brave service men and women didn’t fight for this liberal woke garbage of an agenda, and I didn’t come to Washington to put a rubber stamp on it either.”
As Breitbart News has made clear throughout this story, Barr, through his congressional and campaign spokesman Alex Bellizzi, has refused to sit for an interview to answer questions about why he voted for these provisions and these bills. It’s unclear if he even read the legislation before voting for the bills, if he had any communication with McConnell—who also supported both—before voting for them, or if he even knew what he was doing at the time he made these votes. When reached by Breitbart News this week through Barr’s congressional office to ask about this behavior, Bellizzi at first refused to answer questions from the congressional office, claiming this was a campaign inquiry. When Breitbart News made clear that this was a congressional inquiry because it reflected Barr’s official actions as a U.S. congressman, Bellizzi then changed email addresses anyway to Barr’s Senate campaign email account to send a strange statement that again does not address any of the specifics in these votes or legislation. Instead of defending the congressman’s votes or answering specific questions about them, Bellizzi, on Barr’s behalf, attacked Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and his EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin. He also sent two strange unrelated sentences attacking Barr’s Senate primary opponent, Morris, but again refused to answer the specific questions on behalf of the congressman.
“Andy Barr stood with Secretary Rubio, Administrator Zeldin, the entire Kentucky House delegation (except Rep. Massie) and nearly every other Republican to pass the NDAA, delivering well-deserved pay raises for our troops,” Bellizzi said in the statement that he said came from the Barr campaign—despite this being an official congressional inquiry.
The unrelated attacks on Morris, since they have nothing to do with Barr’s behavior as a Congressman, are not included here. Bellizzi has also not answered followup questions as to why he was using Barr’s campaign email account to reply to official congressional inquiries, or why the congressman is refusing to answer questions about these votes he took as a congressman. It’s unclear at this time whether Barr himself is aware of Bellizzi’s conduct as a staffer in these matters, and it’s certainly unlikely to win Barr any friends or support in the Trump administration when his staff are out openly attacking two cabinet officials who work for President Trump. Bellizzi also implied that he has been promised some kind of a position in a Barr U.S. Senate office should Barr win the election, even though the primary in months away and the general election is more than a year away. It’s, again, unclear if the congressman is aware that Bellizzi is behaving in such a manner.
What’s more, Bellizzi’s statement that Barr stood with Zeldin is categorically false. Zeldin actually did vote against final passage of the 2021 NDAA after Trump vetoed it–and as Breitbart News reported above Barr did not vote. Zeldin also voted against the 2022 NDAA, which Barr voted for. This means Barr’s staff are openly lying in their attacks on Trump officials in a desperate attempt to cover up the congressman’s pro-DEI votes.
But there is one key thing in Bellizzi’s statement that is particularly prescient: He talks about how Barr joined the rest of the Kentucky delegation—he specifies in the sentence “House delegation”—also voted for all these woke provisions in the 2021 and 2022 NDAAs. But, interestingly, another Kentucky “Republican” voted for both of them, too: McConnell. Barr, of course, has aligned himself closely with McConnell and even calls McConnell his “mentor.”
Maybe his “mentor” told him exactly how to vote—and therein lies the crux of the question facing Kentucky GOP primary voters next year. Should they trust Barr to vote in their interest, or in the interests of what McConnell and the career political class consultants around him want? When push comes to shove in the Senate down the road, as it most certainly will, whose side is he really on?