“What does teleport mean? Was he kidding?” asked President Donald Trump in a recent cellphone interview with CNN. Trump was talking about Gregg Phillips, a senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Phillips – who is described in his FEMA biography as someone with “experience in emergency and humanitarian response, state government operations and large-scale program reform” – has been a promoter of unfounded election fraud claims for years. He’s also claimed that he once suddenly found himself in a Georgia Waffle House 50 miles from where he had been the moment before.
That’s the story that Trump was responding to on the call with CNN. The outlet first reported on Phillips’ outlandish claim in March. While Trump has made headlines for ordering the government to release files about UFOs, he seemed skeptical of teleportation.
“I don’t know anything about teleporting,” Trump reportedly told CNN when the outlet informed him that Phillips’ claim was not a joke. “It just sounds a little strange, but I know nothing about teleporting or him, but I’ll find out about it right now.”
Phillips was tapped to head FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery last December, said another CNN report. According to the outlet, he’s also told stories “for years” that “blur the boundary between the ordinary and the supernatural.”
In addition to the Waffle House story, Phillips has claimed that a dead girlfriend once lifted his car off the road to avoid a crash, that Satan spoke to him while he walked across Spain and that, and that he once woke up in a McDonald’s parking lot with a Big Mac in his lap and 15,000 steps logged in his health app after collapsing inside a Lowe’s hardware store in Indianapolis, Ind. CNN said he’s told the stories on “various right-wing podcasts.”
He’s also mentioned them in social media posts.
“Satan lied to me. He convinced me to pour out my water bottle to reduce by pack weight,” Phillips said in a video posted to Truth Social last October about that Spain experience.
After CNN reported on the Waffle House teleportation story, Phillips again took to Truth Social to write about his claim.
“I have been fighting cancer, first as prostate cancer and then as stage four metastatic bone cancer, since 2019. In 2023, I was given less than 12 months to live. When conventional medicine had exhausted its options, I embarked on an alternative protocol and documented it honestly – twelve weeks, in real time. The episode that became the basis for the recent press coverage was in the very first week. I was in the opening days of intensive treatment, heavily medicated, not thinking about future headlines. That context was nowhere in the reporting,” he said in an April 1 post.
Phillips added: “The word ‘teleportation’ was not mine. It was used by someone else in the conversation reaching for language to describe something with no easy name. The more accurate biblical terms are ‘translated’ or ‘transported’ – not new ideas for people of faith.”
Many of Phillips’ Truth Social posts are Christianity-focused, and some are pro-Trump. CNN also noted that Phillips has said he relied on a self-directed regimen of ivermectin and fenbendazole, antiparasitic drugs commonly used to deworm animals, instead of chemotherapy to treat his cancer. Ivermectin made headlines nationally when podcaster Joe Rogan said he took it to treat COVID-19.
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 24: Office of Response and Recovery Director Gregg Phillips listens as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference in the National Response Coordination Center at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters on January 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. A massive winter storm is bringing frigid temperatures, ice, and snow to nearly 200 million Americans.Photo by Al Drago/Getty ImagesRegarding the Waffle House claims, The New York Times reported that no one at the Rome, Ga., Waffle House Phillips said he mysteriously traveled to remembers him at all.
“A review of Phillips’ podcast appearances, livestreams and interviews over the past five years reveals a pattern of outlandish claims,” said CNN. “Across dozens of recordings reviewed by CNN from the last five years, Phillips repeatedly described what he characterized as supernatural encounters, often framing them as part of a religious or spiritual experience.”
Some of these recordings included saved episodes from the “Onward” podcast co-hosted by conservative activist Catherine Engelbrecht that appeared to have been removed from public platforms as of this week. CNN noted that he has described his “supernatural” experiences in spiritual terms and that he has claimed that he’s “actually dead” and is just on Earth “doing God’s stuff.”
After CNN reported on the Waffle House story in March, the White House reportedly contacted the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA’s parent agency. A White House official told the outlet that they urged FEMA to sideline Phillips or keep him from view.
“Everyone’s thoughts were, ‘What the hell is this? This guy has got to go,’” the official reportedly said.
It seems like Phillips was sidelined, with CNN reporting that he was pulled from a hearing scheduled on Capitol Hill. A source also told the outlet that he was told to stop posting about teleportation. Several sources also said that Phillips was “furious” and now thinks that other Trump officials were angling against him.
“Since then, he has grown increasingly agitated and suspicious, multiple FEMA insiders who work with Phillips told CNN,” the outlet reported. Last week, he was left off a trip with newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to North Carolina, even though Phillips had traveled to the region after Hurricane Helene.
Even before the Waffle House story made headlines, Phillips reportedly clashed with other officials at FEMA. CNN’s sources said he was at odds with former DHA Secretary Kristi Noem and deputy Corey Lewandowski, who sought to shrink FEMA’s workforce.
“Phillips repeatedly warned that those moves were putting Americans at risk, earning him respect from some senior agency staff who worry FEMA’s capabilities have been crippled in Trump’s second term,” said the outlet. “For months, those senior staffers have argued that despite Phillips’ checkered past and history of controversial, conspiratorial statements, he has been the most reasonable and trusted political appointee inside the agency. Phillips, they said, was one of the few willing to push back and protect his team.”
One senior FEMA official described the situation as “Kafkaesque,” and officials at the agency are also worried that its future seems unclear. CNN said it reached out to Phillips, FEMA and DHS for comment but that none of them replied.
