'Haters gonna hate': A top FEMA official defends his claim that he was teleported

[demmiblue]

The top official in charge of the federal government’s disaster response has taken to social media to double down on his claim that he’s experienced “teleportation” – an experience he insists was real and connected to his religious beliefs – while also saying his remarks have been taken out of context.

“Haters gonna hate,” Gregg Phillips, a senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, wrote in one comment defending himself earlier this month.

“I know what I’ve experienced,” he wrote in another post, in what appeared to be a poem where he refers to people ridiculing what they don’t understand and to Jesus Christ rising from the dead.

CNN previously reported that Phillips, who serves as associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery at FEMA, described in a podcast last year multiple episodes in which he said he was suddenly teleported miles away — including once to a Waffle House roughly 50 miles from where he had been.

CNN also reported Phillips had a history of violent rhetoric towards public officials. He said in a podcast last year that he’d like to punch “that b*tch” in the mouth, referring to former President Joe Biden who had just left office, before adding, “He deserves to die.” In another podcast, Phillips said that migrants were coming to kill Americans while warning people to be armed.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/01/politics/fema-official-gregg-phillips-defends-teleportation-claim

FEMA was once described as a “turkey farm”: a place to store incompetent political cronies despite the importance of its work.

Now it’s a place to store lunatics, whack jobs, who will put “teleportation” on the list of evacuation options.

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) 2026-04-01T12:22:28.246Z

[tanyev]

1. Yes, a devout follower of the obscure cult of St. Wafflia.

[wcmagumba]

2. This is one cray cray dude...he loves him some Waffle House...I'll always teleport myself for a good breakfast...

[Timeflyer]

3. Waffle House Restaurants and disasters--this guy gets the connection. Hence, highly qualified (and not nuts at all!)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Waffle House Index is a metric named after the Southern US restaurant chain Waffle House known for its 24-hour, 365-day service.[1] Because the restaurant chain is always open (except in extreme circumstances), it has given rise to an informal but useful metric to determine the severity of a storm and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery.[2][3] The metric was coined by Craig Fugate in August 2004 after Hurricane Charley. He was leading the Florida Division of Emergency Management.[4] The metric is unofficially[2][4] used by FEMA to inform disaster response.[5][6]"

[riversedge]

4. Oh, it is just Star Trek's transporter!!

[MLAA]

5. I don't care whether he was teleported or not, but he is disqualified for his hateful, threatening rhetoric directed at

President Biden and others as well as bringing his hypocritical religious beliefs to work.

[Rver]

6. Seems to me that experience

could've been a DUI. I wonder what his car looked like when he got there?? Just saying

[0rganism]

7. Phillips missed his true calling as Transportation secretary

A little disorientation is a small price to pay for instantaneous causality-bending ftl movement.

[Intractable]

8. It's called having "blackouts."

That's when you wake up elsewhere and wonder how you got there.

Booze, drugs, trauma, dementia, etc., many roads can get you there.

[harumph]

9. Will someone please start a list of these fuckers so they can never get a gov't job again?

I tried, but every fucking day it's another whackjob. Needs to be a group project.

[Bluetus]

10. I DO care. When our public servants set themselves up

for blackmail and extortion, it is important. It puts everything at risk.

If they had come clean with their lifestyle choices before accepting the jobs, then I wouldn't care much about her husband's predilections.

[Martin68]

11. Maybe he can teleport hurricane victims out of the danger zone! What a total ass!