A top FEMA official has history of violent rhetoric and said he once teleported to Waffle House

A top FEMA official has history of violent rhetoric and said he once teleported to Waffle House

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/20/politics/fema-official-gregg-phillips-violent-rhetoric-teleported-kfile

As millions of Americans braced for a series of brutal storms this winter, the senior official in charge of the federal government’s 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.

Gregg Phillips, appointed in December to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, rose to prominence not through his time as a federal emergency management professional but as a far-right activist who spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud and frequently used violent rhetoric toward political opponents.

Most notably, Phillips on multiple podcasts made bizarre claims to have been involuntarily teleported, including once to a Georgia Waffle House 50 miles away.

“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips said on one podcast last year. “It was real.”