'America deserves better': Disbelief as Trump official doubles down on teleportation claim

The man appointed by President Donald Trump to lead America’s disaster recovery will not stop talking about teleportation. It’s leading many people to question whether he’s fit for the job.

Even before this past week, many concerns had already been raised about Gregg Phillips, who Trump tapped as associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in December.

Phillips had no formal experience in disaster management prior to being given a senior role overseeing billions of dollars to help victims of floods, hurricanes, and wildfires.

But he did have qualifications that are evidently more important to the second Trump administration: a long history of echoing the president’s baseless claims about election fraud, including that millions of noncitizens illegally voted in 2016 and that an elaborate operation involving ballot stuffing “mules” helped former President Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020.

Because Phillips was a presidential appointee, Congress was not given the opportunity to scrutinize these statements or others he’s made, including his description of himself as a “very vocal opponent of FEMA,” the very agency he was chosen to help lead. Nor did it have the opportunity to examine accusations that he directed millions in government contracts to his own personal businesses and associates while working in the Texas and Mississippi governments.

But months into his tenure, Phillips is finally getting some attention for comments he made on multiple podcasts, in which he claimed to have been involuntarily “teleported,” including to a Waffle House in Georgia.

Phillips discussed the supernatural experience in a January 2025 episode of the podcast Onward, hosted by fellow election conspiracy theorist Catherine Engelbrecht. CNN first reported on the conversation earlier this month:

“I was with my boys one time and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House—this was in Georgia—and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said...

“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.”

Phillips said this was not the only time he’d been teleported. In another case, he described his car being “lifted up” and dropped in a ditch outside a church in Albany, Georgia.

CNN reported on other controversial and violent statements made by Phillips as well, including one on the same podcast in which he said he’d like to “punch [Biden] in the mouth” and that he “deserves to die.” In a 2024 Truth Social post, Phillips also urged listeners to learn how to shoot firearms and warned them that migrants were “coming here to kill you.”

But it’s his tales of teleportation that have drawn the greatest ridicule. And Phillips has only continued to double down, according to a report out Wednesday from CNN’s KFile.

“Haters gonna hate,” Phillips wrote on Truth Social in a post that now appears to be deleted.

“I know what I’ve experienced, I know Who I serve,” he continued, in a reply to one of his detractors on the right-wing social media site owned by Trump.

To another, he said: “I have no regrets for my words nor my faith in my Savior, Jesus Christ. The Bible has many examples of the power of God.”

Given the enormity of FEMA’s responsibility, especially with the climate crisis increasing the number of billion-dollar disasters in the US in recent years, Phillips’ tenuous grasp on the fabric of reality has led some to worry that the agency is in suboptimal hands.

“With over 340 million people in this country, you’d think we could find people grounded in reality to run our government programs,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). “And yet, here’s another powerful official who exists on lies and conspiracy theories. America deserves better.”