Waffle House Employees Didn’t See FEMA Official Who Says He Teleported to Georgia Location

One longtime server said that she’s “seen it all,” but she’s “never seen that,” referring to Gregg Phillips’ teleportation claim

By Bailey Richards/ People/ April 4, 2026

{And he’s far from the only mentally ill official in this administration. President Trump (he’s one too) has collected the worst people imaginable, many of whom are incompetent and unqualified. The people in his cabinet are particularly awful and even dangerous, Pete Hegseth and Robert F.K Kennedy Jr., for example.–TBPR Editor}

NEED TO KNOW

• FEMA official Gregg Phillips claims he teleported 50 miles to a Waffle House in Rome, Ga., but nobody saw it
• The New York Times interviewed Waffle House employees and regulars at Rome’s three locations, but none said they ever saw Phillips
• Phillips doubled down on his claim on social media after widespread backlash, citing Biblical miracles

A senior official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) claimed he teleported 50 miles to a Waffle House in Georgia, but nobody can back it up.

Gregg Phillips made the bizarre claim in a since-deleted podcast episode and, after it was met with backlash and doubt, he doubled down on it, citing Biblical miracles. However, nobody can seem to back up his story, according to a New York Times report published on Friday, April 3.

The Times interviewed about two dozen Waffle House employees and regulars across the three locations in Rome, Ga. — where Phillips, who leads FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, said the teleportation took place — and the response was unanimous: Nobody saw anyone teleporting into the breakfast chain.

Or as the outlet phrased it, none of the interviewees “said they were aware of anyone traveling to the 24-hour restaurants by paranormal means.”

“I’ve seen it all,” longtime Waffle House server Shastoni Burge told the outlet. “But I’ve never seen that.”

Several of Phillips’ bizarre claims began circulating after a March CNN report on his history of outlandish, far-right and violent rhetoric — including the Waffle House claim, which the FEMA official shared in a now-deleted podcast episode from January 2025.

In the episode, Phillips said that he was involved in multiple incidents of teleportation, including oncewhere his car was flown through the air to a church and once where he “ended up at a Waffle House, like 50 miles away from where I was.” (Elsewhere in the episode, he shared a desire to punch Joe Biden and stated that the former president “deserves to die.”)

After the initial CNN report spawned widespread criticism of Phillips, the FEMA official stood his ground, writing in a since-deleted March 28 Truth Social post: “The Bible calls it transported or translated.”

He also responded to a question about whether he had experienced teleportation with a “yes,” and in another post shared on March 23 he wrote, “God will not be mocked. People can debate me. Question me. Even ridicule what they don’t understand.”

“I know what I’ve experienced,” said the FEMA official. “I know Who I serve.

In a March 22 post, Phillips also cited a portion of the New Testament’s Acts of the Apostles where “the Spirit of the Lord snatched” away an early Christian holy man — known as Philip the Evangelist in some denominations — from a roadside baptism and is then described as appearing in a city miles away.

All of the FEMA official’s Truth Social posts have been taken down as of April 4.