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

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.”

FEMA official detailed ‘teleporting’ experience: ‘It’s scary in a way’

FEMA official detailed ‘teleporting’ experience: ‘It’s scary in a way’

1:22

In January, as a massive snowstorm battered much of the country, Phillips was at the center of the action — stationed beside Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in FEMA’s command hub, photographed with her at the head of a sprawling conference table, and standing prominently behind her during a press briefing.

FEMA officials have described Phillips’ job as among the most consequential in the agency, involving decisions that affect search-and-rescue operations, emergency aid, infrastructure restoration and ultimately distributing billions of dollars in disaster assistance.

When Phillips arrived at FEMA in December, some career officials were openly skeptical of someone with so little federal government emergency-management experience and a long record of inflammatory rhetoric being one of the most important officials in the agency.

Multiple FEMA officials speaking candidly to CNN expressed initial concerns about whether Phillips was up to the job. But after a few weeks, several of them told CNN that, to their surprise, Phillips’ hands-on involvement during the spate of storms had softened some of their doubts.

“Gregg Phillips is FEMA’s best hope at this moment,” one high-ranking FEMA official told CNN at the time. “I can’t believe I’m saying that.”

Phillips’ visibility during the storm also renewed questions about his background — and the rhetoric and beliefs that defined his rise long before he entered FEMA’s command center.

A CNN KFile review of Phillips’ social media and podcast appearances found that he repeatedly used violent rhetoric, shared conspiracy theories and, in one case, claimed he’d experienced multiple instances of teleportation. CNN also uncovered a number of deleted posts from Phillips directing deeply personal attacks at Democratic officials and spreading a conspiracy theory following President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.

“I would like to punch that b*tch in the mouth right now,” Phillips said in January 2025 on a podcast, referring to former President Joe Biden. “He is a nasty, shitty, crappy human being, and he deserves to die. And I hope he does.”

In response to CNN’s reporting, a FEMA spokesperson said, “This is so silly it’s barely worth acknowledging. DHS, FEMA, and Mr. Phillips are focused on the critical mission of emergency management and ensuring the safety of the American people. Many of the comments cited are taken out of context or represent personal, informal, jovial, and somewhat spiritual discussions made in the context of barely surviving cancer; in a private capacity prior to his current role.”

Phillips is scheduled to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next Wednesday, as part of a hearing on the impacts of the DHS shutdown.

The podcast, Onward, is co-hosted by Catherine Engelbrecht, a conservative activist who frequently collaborates with Phillips in promoting false and unproven claims of widespread voter fraud.

In other comments on podcasts he co-hosted over the last five years, Phillips suggested that both Covid-19 and the vaccine were designed to kill people, and once said that top officials at the Department of Homeland Security after the failed attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 were having meetings where they were probably “planning the next assassination attempt.”

In the same January 2025 episode in which he made his comments about Biden, Phillips also described experiences in which he said he teleported physically.

“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,” Phillips said in the January 2025 podcast episode.

“And they said, ‘where are you?’ and I said, ‘A Waffle House.’ And ‘a Waffle House where?’ And I said, ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said, ‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”

“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips added. “It’s no fun because you don’t really know what you’re doing. You don’t really understand it, it’s scary, but yet um – but so real. And you know it’s happening but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what just an incredible adventure it all was.”

In other parts of the episode, he claimed that his vehicle “lifted up” while he was driving and carried him roughly 40 miles from Albany, Georgia, before setting him down in a ditch near a church.

Phillips said the experiences were frightening and uncontrollable, and questioned at the time whether they were “evil” or “good,” but insisted they were real and had happened more than once.

Late in January 2025, in another episode while talking about a Trump executive order targeting former intelligence officials who questioned the veracity of Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election, Phillips escalated his rhetoric.

“I’m going to find you people. I’m going to find you. When I get well, I’m going to find you. I’m going to find you. I’m going to track you down and I’m going to beat the living snot out of you. I’m going to find you,” he added.

Phillips first rose to national prominence after promoting the false claim that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, a narrative later cited by then-President Donald Trump.

In 2017, CNN’s KFile reported that Phillips gave conflicting and misleading accounts about VotersTrust, a voter-fraud watchdog group he ran and repeatedly described as a nonprofit despite no public records showing it was registered as one.

During a phone interview with KFile that year, Phillips initially denied ever calling the group a nonprofit before later acknowledging he may have “misstated” its status when confronted with his own prior statements.

Phillips’ work was later featured prominently in the film “2000 Mules,” a documentary that alleged widespread ballot trafficking in the 2020 election and was promoted as evidence of systemic fraud by Phillips and True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories.

The film’s claims were widely disputed by election officials, courts and independent experts. The film’s distributor, Salem Media Group, later withdrew “2000 Mules” and its companion book from distribution and issued a public apology as part of a defamation settlement.

On a since-deleted Twitter account reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Phillips frequently spread false claims of massive voter fraud and deployed crude typo-laden insults at Democratic lawmakers.

“You to to (sic) hold yourself responsible and lose 100 pounds you fatass. Seriously, don’t you care about yourself, your family, the Congress? Being a pig is a choice,” he said in one post directed at Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler.

In 2020, Phillips suggested that Michigan state officials were aligned with China in a way that helped Joe Biden win the state in 2020. Other posts in 2019 said his political adversaries wanted him dead, and framed America’s political differences as “first shots in the war,” for the future of America. Phillips also alleged that Twitter was “shadowbanning” him to prevent what he described as the deployment of an “illegal alien voting algorithm.”

Phillips has used violent and apocalyptic language in other videos posted to social media, saying in one video from Onward posted on Truth Social from a March 2024 episode that migrants were coming to kill Americans while warning people to be armed.

“Please protect yourself, protect your family, protect your babies, protect your everyone around you,” he said. “They’re coming from everywhere and they’re coming here to kill you. Be well armed. Take care of your family. Take care of your, your wives, your children, your daughters, everyone. Don’t let this happen.”

“They want you dead,” added Phillips. “They’ve come here to kill you. And if anybody believes it any differently, they’re wrong. These people are here to fight. They’re here to fight us. They’re here at war.”

Phillips urged listeners to learn how to shoot firearms.

“If you don’t know how to shoot, learn to shoot,” Phillips said. “If you don’t know how to move in an urban environment or in a closed environment, learn to move. This is happening. It’s coming now. It’s here.”

In May 2023, Phillips said a Chinese army was being imported to kill Americans at the border.

“We’re importing an army of 10 million people that want you dead. It’s not a game. It’s not a joke.”