The Daily Show took aim at Donald Trump’s disaster response chief over his claim that he was once teleported to a Waffle House, finding a gaping hole in the already bizarre tale.
Gregg Phillips made the strange claim in a January 2025 episode of the podcast Onward, nearly a year before he was appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Office of Response and Recovery.
Speaking to conservative figure Catherine Engelbrecht, Phillips said he ended up at a Waffle House in Georgia after teleporting. “It was possible. It was real,” Phillips, a conspiracy theorist, recounted.
“Now, in a normal administration, we would go the entire presidency without ever knowing who’s the head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery,” The Daily Show host Ronny Chieng began. “But, you know, this is Trump. So instead, we get s--t like this.”
After playing a clip of Phillips’ interview, Chieng said, “Wait, wait. Hang on. Wait. Time out in America. Give me a timeout here. This dude teleported to Waffle House?”
The comedian, 40, pointed out one of the many issues with Phillips’ story.
“You have the power of teleportation, but you use it to go to Waffle House?” Chieng asked.
“That’s like if you invented time travel, and instead of going back in time to kill Hitler,” he continued, “You went back in time to kill the cashier at Waffle House.”
“Surely, there was another place you teleported to, besides Waffle House?” the host pondered.
Phillips did, in fact, claim to have teleported on another occasion, saying on the podcast that his vehicle once “lifted up” and dropped him 40 miles from Albany, Georgia, finally letting him down in “a ditch outside of a Baptist church.”
Chieng looked astonished at the latter claim, telling the audience, “It’s amazing. This guy teleports to all the exact places you end up when you’re blackout drunk.
“Tiger Woods is like, ‘Yeah, that happened to me too. Yeah, I just teleported into an upside-down car,’” the Daily Show correspondent said, throwing a dig at the golf legend’s recent misfortunes.
The president was asked by CNN about his official’s tale, appearing stumped himself.
“Here’s how crazy this story is. Even Donald Trump heard it and was like, ‘This is crazy,’” Chieng said.
“Was he kidding?” the president wondered.
“I don’t know anything about teleporting… It just sounds a little strange,” Trump told CNN. “I know nothing about teleporting or him, but I’ll find out about it right now.”
Chieng retorted sarcastically, “Trump’s going to find out about it right now! Because if there’s a way to bend the laws of the universe to get waffles quickly, Trump will find it.
“We’ll have to see whether Trump ends up teleporting Gregg Phillips to an unemployment office,” he concluded.
The Daily Beast has contacted FEMA for comment.
