Gregg Phillips, whom the Trump administration appointed in December 2025 as FEMA's associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery, has said on multiple podcasts that he has teleported. His job covers emergency aid, restoring infrastructure, search and rescue, and distributing billions of dollars in disaster assistance.
As CNN reported in late March 2026, Phillips described being transported to a church and to a Waffle House. “Teleporting is no fun. It was real,” he said on one podcast. On a January 2025 podcast he said, “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.” After the report, he doubled down on Truth Social, citing the passage in the Book of Acts in which the apostle Philip is “snatched” away and reappears in another city.
Phillips had a prominent role in Dinesh D'Souza's election-denial film 2000 Mules, which its distributor, Salem Media Group, withdrew in 2024 after being sued by Mark Andrews, a Georgia man falsely portrayed in it as a voting “mule.” In January 2025 he said of President Biden on a podcast, “I would like to punch that b*tch in the mouth right now. He is a nasty, shitty, crappy human being, and he deserves to die. And I hope he does.”
Phillips was pulled from a March 25, 2026 House Homeland Security Committee hearing. There, Rep. Bennie Thompson said his “violent rhetoric and wild conspiracy theories are troubling for someone who holds a leadership position at DHS,” and Rep. Tim Kennedy called him “wildly unfit for his role as head of response and recovery.” A FEMA spokesperson said many of the comments were taken out of context or were “personal, informal, jovial, and somewhat spiritual discussions made in the context of barely surviving cancer.” Asked about Phillips, Trump said, “What does teleport mean? Was he kidding?” CNN later reported that Phillips had been quietly pulled back from public duties.
Correction (October 14, 2026): An earlier version said Phillips “starred” in 2000 Mules and that its distributor paid a $750,000 settlement. Sources describe a prominent role, not a starring one, and none we could load gives a settlement figure, so the amount was removed. It also said both Reps. Thompson and Kennedy called Phillips “wildly unfit”; that phrase was Kennedy's. Two dead links were replaced, and the FEMA response and later developments were added.