The only place to start with on Gregg Phillips, currently the chief of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, which is actually a pretty important job, is why he got hired in the first place: He co-founded “True the Vote,” a conspiracy theory outfit dedicated to proving the 2020 election was stolen from convicted felon President Trump, and along the way got jailed for contempt during a defamation lawsuit in 2022, lent his “expertise” to Dinesh D’Souza’s debunked “documentary” 2000 Mules, and then later admitted in court the fictitious conspiracy thriller was complete bullshit.
So having failed to actually prove the 2020 election was stolen, literally admitted it under oath that it was a lie, should by all measures kind of not be a plus with his principal, right? Lol, no. Not even close. In fact, to Trump, it made Phillips qualified for leading the office responsible for coordinating the federal government’s response to natural disasters and providing the necessary resources to rebuild in the aftermath. Meaning Phillips will be calling the shots if Mount Rainer erupts and sends deadly lahars careening down toward Tacoma, the fault under the Mississippi Valley between Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee ruptures again and causes an 8.0+ magnitude earthquake like it did – three times – in 1811 into 1812, or a Category 5 hurricane plows into east Texas, all of these hazards capable of leaving tens of thousands dead and costing $1 trillion+ in economic damage.
The guy who couldn’t prove the 2020 election was stolen is the guy who’s going to be on the ground leading the response to these disasters if they happen before Trump or, possibly less likely, the next president fires him. The “possibly less likely” there is CNN KFile’s work as they report that they brought to the Orange Fuhrer’s attention the not-very-shocking reality that Phillips’ belief in fantastical shit isn’t limited to simply a fucking stupid narrative that cell phone GPS data – that he spent $2 million to acquire from a marketing broker – somehow revealed that still-unidentified “mules” were trafficking absentee ballots to dropboxes in the run-up to the 2020 election in Georgia.
Not limited in the least. National Zero unfortunately missed this last month, but KFile sure struck big when they unearthed an episode of Phillips’ podcast with “True the Vote” co-founder Catherine Engelbrecht in which he said “I was with my boys one time 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 end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” without qualifying it by explaining that he had been guzzling Jagermeister or India pale ales before suddenly finding himself in a diner without any recollection of how he got there. You know, how normal people do it.
Phillips believes he literally teleported there. But wait there’s more, as CNN writes Phillips has at various points told stories such as “A dead girlfriend once lifted his car off the road to avoid a crash. Satan once spoke to him while he walked across Spain. After collapsing inside an Indianapolis Lowe’s, he came to in a McDonald’s parking lot across the street with 15,000 steps logged on his health app, a Big Mac in his lap, and little understanding of what had just happened.”
That episode and others, including one in which Phillips proclaimed he’s “actually dead. But I’m here doing God’s stuff. And so [God and I] laugh about that a little bit” after describing how God woke him up in the middle of the night by sitting on his bed to tell him his cancer was coming back, have been removed but KFile saved them before doing these write-ups… And asking Trump to comment.
“What does teleport mean? Was he kidding?” asked Trump in response, evidently knowing the definition of teleport (not always a given with Donald) but not what Phillips meant. “I don’t know anything about teleporting… It just sounds a little strange, but I know nothing about teleporting or him, but I’ll find out about it right now,” Trump continued, the “find out about it” possibly calling newly-suffering DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to start looking for a replacement or Phillips himself to explain why he never shared his secret superpower with his commander-in-chief and how to acquire it. Trump would love to be able to teleport in and out of the Miami Dolphins’ cheerleaders’ locker room at his convenience and hiding such knowledge from him is a fireable offense.