Today I learned that Gregg Phillips, the FEMA official in charge of responding to fires and floods, says the hand of God suddenly and mysteriously teleported him to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.
Phillips was named in December to head FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, overseeing more than 1,000 employees and a budget of $300 million. Before that, he advocated conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, and used violent language in connection with President Biden.
“On Wednesday, Mr. Phillips wrote on Truth Social, President Trump’s social media platform, that the incident took place while he was heavily medicated as part of a cancer treatment. But he also described it as a miracle performed by God,” writes Richard Fausset at the New York Times.
“‘The word “teleportation” was not mine,’ Mr. Phillips wrote. ‘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.’”
Holy shit, Gregg, the word “teleportation” is not the problem here.
“Mr. Phillips’s claims are part of a growing trend among high-profile American conservatives to assert the physical presence of beings from the spiritual realm, or from provinces that are often reserved for science fiction novelists. In 2024, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, said that he was ‘mauled,’ while sleeping, by ‘a demon or by something unseen.’ Former Representative Matt Gaetz recently said that a U.S. Army official had told him about ‘hybrid breeding programs, where captured aliens were breeding with humans to create some hybrid race that could engage in intergalactic communication.’
“Representative Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, told Newsmax on Wednesday that he had been briefed by government officials about aliens, adding that the country ‘would’ve come unglued, I think, if they would’ve heard all that I’d heard.’”
The Times’s Fausset interviewed people at all three Waffle Houses in Rome, Georgia, and nobody there had ever seen Phillips. If he arrived by teleportation — or any other form of transportation — nobody saw him.
“At the Waffle Houses of Rome this week, Mr. Phillips’s assertion of supernatural travel was met with skepticism. At the branch on U.S. Route 411, close to a Quality Inn and a pest control company, Estelle Mandeville, 27, was finishing up breakfast. Ms. Mandeville, a North Carolinian who was traveling for work, described herself as ‘uncomfortably atheist,’ and noted that she, personally, had come to Rome in a 2018 Kia Niro.
“Grant Sikes, 20, a student at nearby Berry College who hopes to attend an Episcopal seminary one day, said that divine power, from his experience, expressed itself in more subtle ways. He said he felt the presence of God at that moment, as he wrapped up a late, mellow breakfast with his grandfather, Larry Kellogg, 83.”
Grant is normal! Feeling the presence of God when you’re having breakfast with your grandpa is normal!
“Austin Spears, 29, a land surveyor, also found Mr. Phillips’s story to be dubious. But he also acknowledged that all human lives are studded with little mysteries.
“‘I can say I’ve been drunk and ended up in a Waffle House,’ Mr. Spears said. ‘Don’t know how I got there. But I was there.’”
I always suspected that science fiction would come true. But until Trump, I didn’t think it would be “Idiocracy.”