Trump’s FEMA Disaster Chief Has No Emergency Management Experience, Was Jailed for Contempt, and Claims He’s Been Teleported to Waffle House
Gregg Phillips—a self-described “very vocal opponent of FEMA” and central figure in the 2020 election-denial movement— controls the federal government’s disaster response, with no documented professional experience in emergency management at any level
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration has placed Gregg Phillips in charge of FEMA's Office of Response and Recovery, the position that controls the federal government's entire disaster response operation. Phillips has no documented professional experience in emergency management at any level—federal, state, or local. His own LinkedIn profile describes him as "a very vocal opponent of FEMA."
The appointment puts Phillips in control of search-and-rescue deployments, emergency aid distribution, infrastructure restoration, and the allocation of billions in disaster assistance—the agency's most consequential operational role.
“Gregg Phillips has built a career undermining the institutions that protect Americans. Now he controls the federal government’s response when communities are at their most vulnerable. This isn’t incompetence by accident—it’s a deliberate pattern of putting ideology over the lives of disaster survivors,” said Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council Member Tory Gavito.
ELECTION DENYING HISTORY: Phillips is best known as a central figure in the 2020 election-denial movement, though his fraud allegations began years earlier. Immediately after the 2016 election, Phillips claimed that more than 3 million "noncitizens" had voted illegally—a figure that precisely matched Trump's popular vote deficit against Hillary Clinton. He never released supporting data.
In October 2022, a federal judge ordered Phillips jailed for contempt of court after he defied an order to identify a person linked to the alleged hacking of an election software company's servers. U.S. Marshals escorted him from the courtroom.
In a separate irony, Phillips—despite positioning himself as a voter-fraud authority—was simultaneously registered to vote in three states in 2017: Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.
VIOLENT RHETORIC WEEKS BEFORE APPOINTMENT: A CNN review uncovered a pattern of violent rhetoric and extremist statements. Just weeks before assuming his FEMA role, Phillips said of President Biden: "I would like to punch that b*tch in the mouth right now. He deserves to die."
The Department of Homeland Security defended the comments as "personal, informal, jovial, and somewhat spiritual."
INVOLUNTARY TELEPORTATION: Phillips has alsoclaimed to have been involuntarily teleported on multiple occasions—including 50 miles to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia. A New York Timesinvestigation could not locate any Waffle House employees who recalled the incident.
Sabotaging Our Safety has previously called for Phillips to be removed from his position at FEMA, maintaining he is unfit to fulfill the role until he can demonstrate the ability to take the responsibility of leading disaster response seriously.
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