Teneo Network is a warmed-over remake of the Seven Mountains Mandate for “Cadillac Conservative” elites. Instead of speaking in tongues, they offer corporate platitudes. They sip Napa Valley wine in lieu of guzzling warm beer. But they share the same theocratic worldview of Christian supremacy and the desire to control every finite detail of society, down to the smallest aspects of our individual personal lives.
In 1975, key evangelical leaders were alarmed with recent advances in secularism and human rights. In their lifetimes’, they witnessed what was once unthinkable: The civil rights movement, women’s liberation, Woodstock, and a nascent push for LGBTQ equality. These deeply religious men viewed modern developments as the end of Western civilization and a direct path societal collapse.
Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru), and Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With A Mission, were disgruntled evangelical stars. The two men convened in Colorado to plot how they could turn back the surging liberal tide. They decided that in order to save society and prepare the world for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, right wing Christians must hijack America’s critical institutions.
Bright and Cunningham both claimed to have received a divine message in Colorado, identifying seven key areas of strategic influence where Christians must seek total dominion: Government, Education, Media, Arts & Entertainment, Religion, Family, and Business.
They branded these cultural sectors “mountains” that must be scaled by their ideological comrades. Hence, the 7 Mountains Mandate (7MM) was born--and this new concept was soon popularized by right wing theologian Francis Schaeffer.
In this theocratic scheme, right wing Christians were commanded to infiltrate professions in these seven arenas. Of course, those who participate in this surreptitious chicanery, are two-faced and operating in bad faith. The visage they present to the world is one where they are dedicated servants. In reality, they are misrepresenting themselves, while stealthily serving an extremist movement rather than their company or country.
Today, the Seven Mountains Mandate is embraced by radical Chrisitan movements, such as the New Apostolic Reformation and Bethel Church in Redding, California. Bethel has the nation’s largest “ex-gay” ministry and believes its faith healing team can regrow limbs on amputees. Paula White, spiritual advisor to Donald Trump, is part of this crazy movement.
7MM’s growth has always been limited by class issues. It was often dismissed as a pipe dream for lowbrow, backwoods, tongue speaking evangelical simpletons. Well, imagine if the gaudy, gospel music blaring, tent revival, was suddenly supplanted by sophisticated billionaires in a gilded boardroom, huddled around an Italian marble table, while Bach and Beethoven were melodiously piped in through Bose speakers.
Enter Project 2025’s Teneo Network, which is essentially a warmed-over remake of the Seven Mountains Mandate for “Cadillac Conservative” elites. Instead of speaking in tongues, they offer corporate platitudes. They sip Napa Valley wine in lieu of guzzling warm beer. But they share the same theocratic worldview of Christian supremacy and the desire to control every finite detail of society, down to the smallest aspects of our individual personal lives.
“We’re building the infrastructure—the talent pipeline—that the conservative movement has needed for decades. While much of the conservative movement focuses on developing the right ideas, Teneo focuses on developing the right leaders—and deploying those leaders to take our shared ideas to boardrooms and editorial rooms, to Silicon Valley and the White House, and on,” said Teneo Network CEO Amanda Covo, in her 2022 interview with the Bradley Impact Fund.
You probably haven’t heard of Teneo, because it has virtually no social media presence and largely avoids media coverage. The right-wing Network’s ideology is rooted in a grossly distorted view of liberalism.
“We know the conservative movement, unlike the progressive Left, has failed to prioritize the placement of talented people in positions of influence within the key industries in America. So, progressive ideology is winning on nearly every front,” Covo said.
The imagined machinations of liberals enter the realm of delusion when, in a 2020 video released by ProPublica, Teneo Co-Founder Evan Baeh conjures a tale of how progressives plot in exclusive, private quarters to influence society:
“Imagine a group of four people sitting at the Harvard Club for lunch in midtown Manhattan. A billionaire hedge funder, a film producer, a Harvard professor and a New York Times writer.
The billionaire says: ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if middle school kids had free access to sex-change therapy paid for by the federal government?’ ‘Well,’ the filmmaker says, ‘I’d love to do a documentary on that; it will be a major motion film.’ The Harvard professor says, ‘We can do studies on that to say that’s absolutely biologically sound and safe.’ And the New York Times person says, ‘I’ll profile people who feel trapped in the wrong gender.’”
Such Machiavellian collusion is a myth repeated by extremists like Covo and Baeh to obscure their own projection. They are falsely ascribing unseemly motives to liberals to justify the clandestine schemes and wicked actions they are currently partaking to dominate society and subjugate all who don’t acquiesce to living under their puritanical thumb.
While normal people seek to make great art to beautify the world or bring greater understanding; engage in groundbreaking science to extend or enhance life; or create amazing apps to improve efficiency, Teneo-members fiendishly plot infiltration, subterfuge, conquest and finally dominion.
This is not merely my opinion. Such conclusions can be drawn directly from what the Teneo Network’s wealthy and powerful executives brazenly tell us about their intentions. For example, in a private video made public, Leonard Leo, the organization’s Board Chair, said the purpose of the Teneo Network was to “crush liberal dominance” in America.
What Teneo Network is constructing, is a massive political machine designed, in the words of Covo, to “capture the gates of the industries that define our culture and shape our society.”
Ask yourself: If these fanatics leverage their money and power to “capture the gates,” who is allowed inside? Who will be branded an outsider and left in the cold to suffer?
For an elitist billionaires’ club, the Teneo Network humbly began in 2008 inside a “fairly uninviting” Baja Fresh fast-food restaurant in Washington, D.C.’s DuPont Circle neighborhood. Former Bush administration official Evan Baehr was having lunch with his then-boss, venture capitalist, Peter Thiel. According to an expose in ProPublica:
Baehr and Thiel lamented what they saw as the fragmented state of conservative networks, with their hidebound think tanks and intellectual centers that hold sway over right-of-center politics. A rare bright spot on their side, Baehr and Thiel agreed, was the Federalist Society. Thiel had, in fact, served as president of the Stanford Federalist Society. What if there were a group similar to the Federalist Society for venture capitalists or corporate CEOs or members of the media?
Out of this taco-fueled brainstorm, Teneo Network with was birthed and billed as “a Federalist Society for everything.” The name Teneo was chosen because it was Latin for “I grasp” or “I endure.”
Josh Hawley, then an associate lawyer in private practice, authored Teneo’s founding principles and served on the group’s board. Hawley will go down in history as the Republican senator from Missouri who fist-pumped in support of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021. When hordes of violent thugs breeched the U.S. Capitol, Hawley frantically pranced like a coward through the halls of Congress to escape the mob he incited only hours earlier. Two years later, he ironically published, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.
What Teneo got right was the political model. Under Leonard Leo’s leadership, the Federalist Society was a smashing success that ultimately smashed the independence and respectability of the Judiciary. The group stuffed law firms and courts with MAGA toadies who often cared more about politics and ideology than law or legal precedent.
The pinnacle of Leo’s success was serving as Donald Trump’s advisor for the appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices during his first presidential term. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all voted to end Roe v. Wade.
Teneo originally flailed in its efforts to ape the success of the Federalist Society. So, it wisely recruited Leonard Leo to chair its board of directors in late 2021. This inaugurated a sunnier era in what Teneo co-founder Evan Baehr called “Teneo 2.0.”
On March 17, 2021, Leonard Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust received a $1.6 billion donation from Chicago electronics and manufacturing mogul Barre Seid. The historic gift stands as the largest single contribution ever made to a politically focused dark-money nonprofit. Teneo’s new Board Chair, the now fabulously wealthy and politically powerful Leo, was an immediate rainmaker for the group. It’s days of financial insecurity were over.
Now with Leo’s fat wallet, a newly empowered Teneo Network had the resources and muscle to create what Leo called one of the “most successful talent pipelines in the conservative movement…in all sectors of American life,” including Hollywood, entertainment, business and finance.
Teneo Network operates in the shadows and doesn’t reveal the names of its members, although they are free to share their affiliation with the group. ProPublica lists some of the group’s powerful members:
Vice President J.D. Vance has been a member since 2018\
Missouri’s Josh Hawley, is a co-founder
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who until recently was the fourth-ranking House Republican, is a member
Three senior aides to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a federal judge who struck down a Biden administration mask mandate.
The heads (in 2023) of the Republican Attorneys General Association, Republican State Leadership Committee and Turning Point USA
Ben Shapiro, talk show host and editor of the Daily Wire
Multiple pro athletes and dozens of executives and senior figures in the worlds of finance and energy
In September 2021, JD Vance delivered a keynote speech at a Teneo Network event. He discharged a number of bizarre, unhinged ideas while on-stage, including:
· “I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society. That’s a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well-educated people in this country right now.” [It is worth noting that Vance’s former boss, mentor and political patron, Peter Thiel, who was at the table in DC where Teneo was conceived, is fixated on the Antichrist.]
· “If you listen to Rachel Maddow every night, the basic worldview that you have is that MAGA grandmas who have family dinners on Sunday and bake apple pies for their family are about to start a violent insurrection against this country. But if you listen to Alex Jones every day, you would believe that a transnational financial elite controls things in our country, that they hate our society, and oh, by the way, a lot of them are probably sex perverts too. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that’s actually a hell of a lot more true than Rachel Maddow’s view of society.”
· “It’s really been a few of us over the past few years who have recognized that the big corporations have really turned against conservatives in a very big and powerful way…If we’re unwilling to make companies that are taking the side of the left in the culture wars feel real economic pain, then we’re not serious about winning the culture war.”
· “There are real biological, cultural, religious, spiritual distinctions between men and women. I think that’s what the whole transgender thing is about, is like fundamentally denying basic reality.”
Teneo Network is indicative of the ferocious tenacity in today’s conservative movement. They are more organized, more forward thinking, their major donors are more generous, and they have a precise road map to accomplish their global ambitions. If the free world, representing liberal values, doesn’t drastically up its game, don’t be surprised if we are conquered and forced to endure a century of danger and darkness.
Sure, these Project 2025 extremists are primitive troglodytes--but they are playing the long game and are deadly serious in enacting their delusions. Can we truly say we are as dedicated in our efforts to keep civilization safe from these feudal fanatics and their medieval minds?