Gregg Phillips, a Trump-appointed election fraud conspiracy theorist with no emergency management experience, leads FEMA’s largest division while insisting God transported him across Georgia
The man President Trump chose to oversee the federal government’s response to hurricanes, wildfires, and floods has a problem that most emergency management professionals do not: he believes God once teleported him to a Waffle House. Gregg Phillips, 65, was appointed in December to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery—a division with more than 1,000 employees and a budget approaching $300 million—despite having no background in disaster response. The FEMA teleportation Waffle House controversy now engulfing his tenure has brought fresh attention to how, exactly, he got the job.
The answer appears to have less to do with emergency preparedness than with loyalty. Before his appointment, Phillips was best known as an election fraud conspiracy theorist and executive producer of 2000 Mules, a film so thoroughly debunked that its own publisher pulled it from distribution. He authored a tweet falsely claiming three to five million non-citizens voted in 2016—a figure Trump personally cited to justify launching a voter fraud commission. Phillips and his partner at True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht, were jailed in 2022 for contempt of court after refusing to comply with a federal judge’s order in a defamation case related to their election fraud claims.
FEMA Teleportation Claims Surface on Podcasts
On multiple podcasts last year, the Trump appointee described being involuntarily transported across Georgia on at least two occasions. In one incident, Phillips said he told friends he was heading to Waffle House and then materialized at a location 50 miles away in Rome, Georgia. In another, he said his car was “lifted up” and deposited in a ditch near a church roughly 40 miles from his starting point.
“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips said on the podcast Onward, co-hosted by Engelbrecht, before describing the experience as “an incredible adventure.”
Phillips now describes the incidents as a spiritual journey tied to cancer treatment, citing the Book of Acts, in which the apostle Philip was “snatched” away by the Holy Spirit after a baptism. On Truth Social, he wrote that the preferred biblical terms were “translated” or “transported.” He has not clarified which of these terms FEMA should use in its incident reports.
Waffle House Staff Report No Paranormal Arrivals
A New York Times investigation published Friday found that among roughly two dozen workers and regulars interviewed at Rome’s three Waffle House locations, none recalled anyone arriving by paranormal means. A decade-long server at one location said she had witnessed a customer punch her in the face, an overdose in the bathroom, and a man threaten staff with every steak knife on the premises. Teleportation, she confirmed, would have been new.
An Emory University physics professor consulted for the article noted that the data required to teleport a human body would be, in scientific terms, off the charts. FEMA’s press office did not respond to the Times’ request for comment, maintaining a silence that has become increasingly routine as the agency sheds staff under Trump administration budget cuts.
Congressional Democrats Call Appointment ‘Wildly Unfit’
The FEMA teleportation Waffle House controversy reached Congress last week. At a House Homeland Security Committee hearing, Rep. Bennie Thompson called Phillips’ appointment a source of “serious concerns.” Rep. Tim Kennedy described the Trump appointee as “wildly unfit for his role as head of FEMA response and recovery,” citing violent rhetoric about former President Biden and conspiracy theories about immigrants—qualifications he said were “only outdone by his claims of being teleported to a Waffle House.” Phillips had been scheduled to testify but was pulled from the witness list after CNN’s initial report.
A Trump Loyalty Hire at an Agency in Crisis
The FEMA teleportation Waffle House saga arrives at a particularly fragile moment for the agency. The Trump administration has pushed to dramatically downsize FEMA, with former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem targeting a 50% workforce reduction before her own firing in March. Thousands of experienced disaster responders have already been cut or departed. Trump has not nominated a permanent FEMA administrator, as required by law, instead cycling through three acting leaders—none with the emergency management experience the statute demands. Into this vacuum, he placed Phillips—a man who previously ran a company that received $750,000 from True the Vote for voter analysis through a firm he created—in charge of the division that coordinates supply delivery, manufactured housing, and recovery operations that can last years.
Phillips’ supernatural claims are part of what the Times described as a growing trend among prominent conservatives asserting contact with beings from spiritual or extraterrestrial realms—a pattern of unfalsifiable claims that has accelerated in recent months. Tucker Carlson has said he was “mauled” by a demon while sleeping. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz recently described government “hybrid breeding programs” involving captured aliens. Rep. Tim Burchett told Newsmax he had received classified alien briefings that would make the country “come unglued.”
Meanwhile, hurricane season begins in 58 days. FEMA itself uses a Waffle House Index to gauge disaster severity—if the restaurant is closed, things are bad. The Waffle Houses of Rome, Georgia, remain open and serving a full menu, which under the agency’s own metric means everything is fine.
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