FEMA Leader Who Claimed He Teleported to Waffle House Gone As Hurricane Season Arrives, Exposing An Agency Run On Loyalty Instead Of Readiness

The Administration's Choice to Lead Disaster Response Is Out. The Question Is Why He Was Ever In? 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The official the Trump administration put in charge of FEMA's disaster response, Gregg Phillips—most famous for his bizarre claims he has teleported involuntarily to a Waffle House—has been pushed out of the agency, according to reporting from CNN, leaving one of the most consequential jobs in emergency management vacant in the opening weeks of hurricane season.

For survivors across the country still waiting on FEMA funding and disaster support, the story is not one man's exit. It is that the administration handed a top disaster-response role to someone with no disaster-response experience, kept him there through months of public scrutiny, and removed him only when the embarrassment became too much to manage. That is how this administration has treated the agency Americans count on when everything else has failed.

Gregg Phillips was installed in December to lead FEMA's Office of Response and Recovery, the office that coordinates how the federal government shows up after a catastrophe. He arrived with a long record of promoting election fraud conspiracy theories and no background running disaster operations. 

"You cannot protect families from disasters if the agency built to do it is treated as a place to park political loyalists," said Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council member Rafael Lemaitre. "The administration spent months defending this appointment. Now the person who held it is gone, his replacement is temporary, and storm season is already here. Survivors deserve career emergency managers who answer to the mission, not to politics."