Trump Taps Another Prayer Breakfast Veteran
"Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett has previously unknown history with the theocratic event
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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated another insider from the secretive world of the National Prayer Breakfast to join his administration.
Mark Burnett has been named to serve as an envoy to his home, the United Kingdom.
He is best known as the producer whose decision to have Trump star in “The Apprentice” led millions of Americans to view Trump as a skillful, savvy businessperson despite his numerous bankruptcies, failed businesses, lawsuits, civil violations, stiffed workers, questionable credit, and inability to grow his inherited wealth any faster than the rise of the stock market.
But Burnett is also a longtime guest at the National Prayer Breakfast (NPB), the controversial gathering run by the Fellowship Foundation, aka The Family. As I and others have reported over the years, The Fellowship engages in shadow diplomacy building right-wing networks that oppose LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights around the world.
Burnett has been a regular fixture at the NPB, delivering the 2016 keynote address with wife Roma Downey.
In 2016, Burnett responded to the release of Trump’s remarks about assaulting women with a statement saying “my wife and I reject the hatred, division and misogyny that has been a very unfortunate part of his campaign.” It wasn’t yet public knowledge that Burnett had already, allegedly, been privy to similarly offensive language — reportedly including the n-word — while working on “The Apprentice.”
The very next year, Burnett helped plan Trump’s inauguration and introduced Trump at the 2017 NPB just weeks after he became president in 2017.
According to public accounts and internal Fellowship documents I’ve obtained, Burnett attended the NPB for at least five years straight, 2014 through 2018.
The same documents show who he sat with for two of those years, and who invited him for two of those years.
In 2015, Burnett was seated with a number of relatively low-profile attendees. One, however, producer David Segel, would work with Burnett on the film “Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
The following year, Burnett and Downey shared the duties as keynote speakers. Burnett would have another turn at the spotlight the following year. That’s when he introduced Trump, the nation’s new president, at the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast.
In his introductory remarks, Burnett suggested he and Downey are friendly with Senate Chaplain Barry Black. “You know how much Roma and I love you,” Burnett said from the podium. (Black’s remarks at the event were instrumental in helping to radicalize Mike Lindell.)
Although the NPB has always and falsely been promoted as non-sectarian, Burnett strayed from the script, telling the overwhelmingly Christian audience, “I know everybody in here right now feels refreshed, refreshed in Jesus.”
He also called it “[M]y favorite event of the year.” And Burnett claimed that his career was inspired by “The Art of the Deal,” a book Trump is credited falsely with writing.
Trump returned the favor in 2018, thanking Burnett and Downey during his remarks at that year’s prayer breakfast.
Although The Fellowship deceptively suggests that guests are invited by Congress, the overwhelming majority are picked by Fellowship insiders.
The documents I obtained show that Burnett and Downey were invited by former Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN), who had left office years ago but remained intensely involved with the breakfast.
(Wamp is a theocratic, right-wing Christian. He was also a key player in deceiving the media and the public about the breakfast, referring to me as a “snake” in discouraging The Fellowship from speaking with me.)
At the 2018 NPB — with his friend and former star in the White House, and his career notching even more accomplishments — Burnett and Downey were seated with some somewhat higher-profile names.
Their tablemates included Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and two longtime Fellowship insiders: Former Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and former Rep. Tony Hall (D-OH).
Also at the table was the Forum for Promoting Peace’s Zeshan Zafar of the United Arab Emirates. Zafar had been invited by two Fellowship allies of note.
One was Doug Burleigh, whose role as The Fellowship’s liaison with Russian operatives Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin was barely scrutinized in the Butina scandal.
The other was Bob Roberts, president of a Christian organization called the Institute for Global Engagement. Burnett and the institute worked together on a philanthropic project called The Cradle Fund, which took pains to insist it doesn’t proselytize, after initially being called Cradle of Christianity.
The institute’s former president, John Gallagher, was an advisor to the first Trump transition.
Burnett’s off-the-radar religious affiliations might not be noteworthy except for two things. One is that this is how The Fellowship works. It builds ties like these that push theocracy to whatever degree permitted by at least a token handful of the political opposition in any given country. (A small group of congressional Democrats continue to facilitate Fellowship activities.)
In the UK, birthplace of Segel and Burnett, the parliamentary National Prayer Breakfast is run by an overtly Christian organization. A Fellowship associate in the UK named Nate Ussery has been a speaker of the European Christian Political Movement, a right-wing theocratic organization working to reduce LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights.
The Fellowship network is part of the other reason Burnett’s religious ties are noteworthy in considering his appointment. He’s not the only Fellowship insider taking positions of power in the U.S. government.
The Trump State Department is poised to be led by current Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). A Fellowship insider, Rubio will have incredible reach to foster The Fellowship’s theocratic shadow diplomacy.
As I previously revealed, Rubio’s already been a part of it. He was a key player in a network that protected evangelical Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales — a foe of LGBTQ+ and abortion rights — from corruption charges. Now he’ll have the entire State Department working for him.
The Fellowship has been a key but nearly invisible player in the rightward trajectories of an untold number of countries. Author Jeff Sharlet exposed how their network initiated an anti-gay death-penalty bill in Uganda, work that came to fruition, as I’ve reported, with The Fellowship’s help.
I’ve also revealed Fellowship maneuvering behind the relationship with Ukraine. That maneuvering led to $61 billion in aid earlier this year. But threatens to come at the cost of Ukraine’s status as a secular nation.
And Rubio won’t be alone in the top perches of government next year. It’s not certain whether Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will retain his gavel, but he’s been an important ally for The Fellowship, moving their revamped prayer breakfast into the actual Capitol building.
The Fellowship’s Sen. John Thune (R-SD) has already been elected as the Senate leader for the next Congress. And Trump’s ambassador to NATO, former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, although not known to be a Fellowship insider, shares the group’s theocratic tendencies and hostility to the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people.
In other words, while the media and most Democrats are gravitating toward scandalous revelations about individual nominees, little if any attention has been paid to the systematic construction of a right-wing, theocratic network preparing to take the reins of American diplomacy and international leadership. All undergirded by an organization with a stunning record of success in shifting the course of entire nations.
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Greg Olear has wrtten about the NPB and recently interviewed Gareth Gore on his podcast Prevail about Gore's new book Opus, which gives an excellent background about the Opus Dei organization. Must reading if you want to understand about the darkness behind these people.
Thanks Jonathan for this reporting. I was unaware that Mark Burnett was involved with the NPB.