Trump-appointed FEMA leader says he teleported to Waffle House
Gregg Phillips’ conspiracy-laced, religious worldview is now FEMA’s problem. And ours.
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Gregg Phillips, one of the Trump stooges in charge of leading disaster response in the country, claims he once teleported to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.
Phillips is the head of the Office of Response and Recovery for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It’s one of the highest ranking positions in FEMA and it’s his job to run the response after a major natural disaster. He’s also a massive conspiracy theorist who believes vaccines will kill you, the 2016 election was rife with voter fraud, and the 2024 failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump was an inside job. He was also executive producer of Dinesh D'Souza's discredited propaganda film 2000 Mules.
Also, during a now-deleted podcast appearance in early 2025, he claimed he teleported to a Waffle House 50 miles away from him:
“And they said, ‘where are you?’ and I said, ‘A Waffle House.’ And ‘a Waffle House where?’ And I said, ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said, ‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”
“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips added. “It’s no fun because you don’t really know what you’re doing. You don’t really understand it, it’s scary, but yet um – but so real. And you know it’s happening but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what just an incredible adventure it all was.”
In other parts of the episode, he claimed that his vehicle “lifted up” while he was driving and carried him roughly 40 miles from Albany, Georgia, before setting him down in a ditch near a church.
The man needs serious help. Instead, he’s taken the same route as so many other delusional Republicans: getting promoted to the point where he’s now in charge of a billion-dollar agency.
There are two ways to treat his claims. You can mock them… or you can take them seriously. The New York Times opted for the latter and (with a heavy dose of tongue-in-cheek humor) investigated his claims, leading to this incredible headline on Friday:
I dare you to read the piece (gift link) without laughing:
Indeed, among roughly two dozen workers and regulars interviewed this week at Rome’s three Waffle House locations, none said they were aware of anyone traveling to the 24-hour restaurants by paranormal means, despite their reputation as powerful magnets for the sort of idiosyncratic characters who tend to surf the psychic fringes of the American South.
…
… no one at any of the three Waffle Houses recognized his picture.
…
At the Waffle Houses of Rome this week, Mr. Phillips’s assertion of supernatural travel was met with skepticism…
…
Austin Spears, 29, a land surveyor, also found Mr. Phillips’s story to be dubious. But he also acknowledged that all human lives are studded with little mysteries.
“I can say I’ve been drunk and ended up in a Waffle House,” Mr. Spears said. “Don’t know how I got there. But I was there.”
Beautiful. No notes.
Phillips didn’t seem to appreciate being the butt of everyone’s jokes, though, writing on Truth Social that he was “heavily medicated” to treat his cancer when he made those podcast comments. Furthermore, the word “teleportation” wasn’t his! He was just echoing the host when he said that! The correct word would be “transported”… which clears up absolutely nothing.
The word 'teleportation' was not mine. It was used by someone else in the conversation reaching for language to describe something with no easy name. The more accurate biblical terms are 'translated' or 'transported' — not new ideas for people of faith.
He then added that people mocking him were really mocking Christianity.
If you believe that God moves in ways we cannot fully explain, as I do, then having faith is not a soundbite. It is the whole point.
One month after the protocol ended, my tests showed no evidence of disease.
There are 18 million cancer survivors in the United States. Every one of them knows what it means to fight for your life by whatever means are available. The press chose to mock that fight.I want those 18 million people to know I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES.
No one was mocking his fight against cancer. We sure as hell are mocking everything else, though.
Like his earlier response to the teleportation claims when he again made it all about his religion.
Neither of those things happened, but a man who believes in both delusions—and many more—now has the responsibility to protect suffering people across the country. An agency that ought to be relying on data and science is being led by a man who has shown he’ll believe damn near anything, especially if you can tie religion into it.
Phillips was supposed to testify last week at a hearing for the House Homeland Security Committee, but he was taken off the schedule after these comments resurfaced. He’s still in the job, though. He wouldn’t be qualified to run the department even if he hadn’t said any of these things, but the utter incompetence and batshit lunacy we now have evidence of is apparently a job requirement when you work for the Republican Party.
The problem isn’t just that he’s a conspiracy nut. It’s that he’s told us how he processes reality. There’s no regard for evidence or expertise. That’s not something critics took out of context; those were his words. That’s why he has no business running FEMA, which deals with logistics, forecasting, infrastructure, and life-or-death decisions that require clear-headed judgment under pressure.
If a hurricane hits or a wildfire spreads, you can’t magically transport people to a safer place.
Mockery, then, is absolutely fair in this case. It’s nothing more than accountability, something that Republicans refuse to provide. Phillips wants to hide behind religion and cancer survival to shield himself from criticism, but the irony is that if he said any of these things during a job interview, he wouldn’t be hired as a waiter at Waffle House.
He had an out of bottle experience…
What is far worse than this man’s delusions is the fact every Senate Republican will vote to confirm him for a job he is clearly not fit to hold.