'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