Kevin You’d expect the person overseeing federal disaster relief to have a background in emergency management, maybe some experience coordinating search-and-rescue operations or deploying aid after hurricanes. What you probably wouldn’t expect is for that person to claim, on a podcast, that he was once physically teleported 50 miles to a Waffle House in Georgia. And yet, that’s exactly what Gregg Phillips, the head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, has said publicly.
- While millions of Americans prepared for brutal winter storms this season, the official in charge of federal disaster response had been on the job only a few weeks and had previously claimed on podcasts that he once teleported to a Waffle House.
- A CNN KFile review of Phillips’ social media and podcast appearances found that he repeatedly used violent rhetoric, shared conspiracy theories, and claimed he’d experienced multiple instances of teleportation.
- Phillips is set to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next week, coming after former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s Senate hearing and her subsequent firing by Trump.
Who Is Gregg Phillips?
Gregg Phillips was appointed head of the Office of Response and Recovery at FEMA in December 2025, despite having limited experience in disaster management. Before joining the agency, he was formerly head of the Mississippi Department of Human Services and Deputy Commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. But his national profile grew mostly through his work pushing false election fraud claims. Phillips shot to fame after launching the narrative that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, and his claims were cited by Trump, who used them to try to justify why he lost the popular vote.
Phillips was the executive producer of Dinesh D’Souza’s broadly discredited political film 2000 Mules, which promoted a false conspiracy theory about election fraud. He co-hosted the podcast Onward alongside Catherine Engelbrecht, a conservative activist who frequently collaborates with Phillips in promoting false and unproven claims of widespread voter fraud.
As associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery, Phillips oversees the deployment of resources in the aftermath of disasters, and a senior FEMA official called it the “second most important role in the agency behind the administrator.”
Claims of Teleportation and Violent Rhetoric
It was on the Onward podcast, during a January 2025 episode, that Phillips made his now-infamous claims about teleportation. FEMA’s Gregg Phillips says he teleported to a Waffle House location in Rome, Georgia, after talking to friends about going to get food. He told listeners he suddenly found himself at the restaurant, roughly 50 miles from where he’d started.
That wasn’t the only incident. He claimed that his vehicle was “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. Phillips said the experiences were frightening and uncontrollable, and questioned whether they were “evil” or “good,” but insisted they were real and had happened more than once.
The teleportation stories are grabbing headlines, but FEMA’s chief of disaster relief also has a track record of aggressive language toward political figures. In other comments on podcasts over the last five years, Phillips suggested that both Covid-19 and the vaccine were designed to kill people, and once said that top officials at the Department of Homeland Security were probably “planning the next assassination attempt” after the failed attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
FEMA’s Response and the Timing Problem
FEMA tried to brush off the reports. A FEMA spokesperson told CNN, “This is so silly it’s barely worth acknowledging.” FEMA told CNN that “many of the comments cited are taken out of context or represent personal, informal, jovial, and somewhat spiritual discussions made in the context of barely surviving cancer.”
The timing of these revelations is hard to ignore. Phillips is scheduled to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next week as part of a hearing on the impacts of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. That testimony comes during a rough stretch for the agency’s political leadership. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is being ousted from her role at the end of the month. Noem was grilled as to why her agency had been slow-walking aid funds and additional recovery resources to areas affected by natural disasters.
Two of the top Trump staffers who vouched for Phillips’ appointment have been pushed out of the agency, including DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who left in February.
When Phillips arrived at FEMA in December, some career officials were openly skeptical of someone with so little federal government emergency management experience and a long record of inflammatory rhetoric being one of the most important officials in the agency. Interestingly, after a few weeks in the role, several FEMA officials said they came around to Phillips after seeing his initiative during the January storm response, with one high-ranking official telling CNN, “Gregg Phillips is FEMA’s best hope at this moment. I can’t believe I’m saying that.”
Can FEMA Afford This Kind of Distraction?
All of this arrives at a particularly tricky moment for the agency. FEMA officials have described Phillips’ job as among the most consequential in the agency, involving decisions that affect search-and-rescue operations, emergency aid, infrastructure restoration, and the distribution of billions of dollars in disaster assistance. With hurricane season approaching and lawmakers already concerned about agency funding, questions about Phillips’ judgment are landing at the worst possible time.
Whether Phillips’ teleportation claims reflect personal eccentricity or something more concerning is a question Congress may soon ask him directly. For the millions of Americans who depend on FEMA during their worst moments, the answer matters quite a bit.
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