FEMA Official Who Claimed He Teleported To Waffle House Gets Beamed Out of Agency

Screenshot via C-SPAN

The FEMA official who claimed he once teleported to a Waffle House has been ousted from the agency, CNN reported on Thursday.

In March, CNN’s KFile team — Andrew Kaczynski, Em Steck, and Gabe Cohen — reported that Gregg Phillips, the head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, had a disturbing history of violent political rhetoric and even claims of teleporting to a Waffle House.

Phillips wildly recalled in a January 2025 podcast:

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. 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. 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 – but so real.

Now, according to CNN’s Kaczynski and Cohen, he’s been “pushed out” of FEMA. While the Department of Homeland Security maintained that Phillips was only “taking leave for personal reasons,” sources told the outlet otherwise.

“New DHS leadership had grown weary of the embarrassment surrounding Phillips’ public image and of his periodic clashes with the department’s other leaders,” CNN wrote.

Per a FEMA statement to The Washington Post, which first reported on Phillips’ departure, the former official “has played a pivotal role in stabilizing the Office of Response and Recovery and advancing key reforms to strengthen our mission delivery.”

Additionally, the Post wrote that a senior official who left FEMA earlier this year, David Arnold, will come back to take Phillips’ post in an acting capacity.

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