ATLANTA — A FEMA official is making headlines after he said he teleported to a North Georgia Waffle House.
During a now-deleted podcast interview, Gregg Phillips, who leads FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, said he teleported some 50 miles away.
“Teleporting is no fun... It was scary in a way,” Phillips said. “I was on the phone,” Phillips said. “(I thought) ‘Oh my God, what’s happening?’ And I landed about 40 miles away in a ditch outside of a Baptist church in a little tiny town... It was an incredibly frightening moment to experience yourself in your car, flying through the air.”
On another occasion, Phillips said “I was with my boys... 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 ended up at a Waffle House, like, 50 miles away from where I was.”
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Phillips added: “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.’”
The New York Times spoke with several people who work for Waffle House in Rome, and no one remembers seeing Phillips.
Philips recently took to Truth Social to defend what he said.
“God will not be mocked. People can debate me. Question me. Even ridicule what they don’t understand,” he wrote in a post on March 23. “I know what I’ve experienced. I know who I serve.”
In a statement from FEMA, the agency said:
“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 was scheduled to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee last week, but did not appear after his teleportation comments surfaced.
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