Beam Me to the Waffle House, Scotty

 

by Pa Rock

Hobbling Pedestrian

(Note:  Today's posting deals with the science fiction (?) concept of teleportation, a process defined by my Aunt Ida (AI) as "the hypothetical, instantaneous transfer of matter or information between two locations without traveling the physical space in between."  It is not meant to be sacrilegious in any way, especially on Easter Sunday, but just happens to be where my mind is at this morning.  If you find the notion offensive, as the good Pope from Chicago would say, "Mea  culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa!  ~ Pa Rock)

Other than having a direct pipeline from Fox News, it's hard to imagine where the Trump administration keeps coming up with its seemingly endless supply of uninformed and unqualified kooks and misfits to function as cabinet secretaries and agency heads.  When it ultimately crashes in on itself in the not too distant future, Trump II will try to place the blame for its historic failure on "lunatic" Democrats, immigrants, women, and people of color, but ultimately the trophy for that colossal collapse will rest on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office - along with participation trophies for Bibi Netanyahu and Vlad Putin.

Watching the Trump administration collapse in real time is somewhat akin to viewing a live-streamed, poorly planned suicide.  It's happening right now, before our very eyes, and the rolling tragedy is too compelling (and far too long overdue) to resist and tune out.   Trump has begun ousting some of the star clowns of his second term, Noem and Bondi, for instance, but as fast as one is shuffled out the backdoor, another steps boldly through the front.

Case in point:  Gregg Phillips is a conspiracy theorist with a history of violent rhetoric who had also made claims about being teleported from one location to another against his will.  He apparently became known to Donald Trump through his false claims in social media that the 2020 election was rigged.  While Phillips has had experience in administration of the Departments of Human Services in Mississippi and Texas, he does not have a background in emergency management, yet last December Trump selected him to head the Office of Response and Recovery for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a position for which some Democrats have said he is unfit to serve.

In January of 2025, almost a full year before his appointment to the FEMA post,  Mr. Phillips went on a podcast and said that he had been "involuntarily teleported" multiple times, including once to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.  That statement is just now beginning to receive the level of public scrutiny that it should have had earlier, and it has set Mr. Phillips on a path to becoming yet another very colorful character in Donald Trump's tragicomedy of an administration.

In an article in People Magazine two weeks ago by Meredith Kile, Ggregg Phillips was quoted from an interview on the podcast "Onward":

"Teleporting is no fun.  It was scary in a way.  I mean you don't really know, OK.  Is this evil?  Is this good?  What do I do with this?  I was on the phone.  I thought, 'Oh my God, what's happening?'  And I landed about 40 miles away in a ditch outside of a Baptist church in a little tiny town.  It was an incredibly frightening moment to experience yourself in your car flying through the air.."

(That sounds more like Dorothy riding in her farmhouse in the tornado than it does a good, old-fashioned Star Trek teleportation to this old codger, but hey, everyone's a critic, right?)

In another quote in the People article, Phillips said:

"I was with my boys, and I was telling them I was going to go to Waffle House and get Waffle House.  And I ended up at a Waffle House.  This was in Georgia, and I ended up at a Waffle House, like 50 miles away from where I was."

Gregg Phillips' Waffle House tale had his landing at one in Rome, Georgia, a community that actually has five Waffle Houses.  This week the New York Times sent a reporter to Rome, Georgia, who stopped by all five of the establishments to see if anyone remembered the man who suddenly "dropped in," but no one did.

Friends told Phillips that was not possible, but he responded that it was possible and it was real - that from the man who is responsible for handling emergency situations for the United States government.

Good one, Donald!  Only the best people, right?

Please sir, may we have another?