Republican strategist Steve Schmidt couldn't hide his disbelief Saturday after learning that a senior FEMA official claimed he was transported to a Waffle House in Rome,?asAmericaxsgovernmentfallsto? Georgia, by the hand of God.

Gregg Phillips, who leads FEMA's Office of Response and Recovery, the agency's top disaster response position, made the teleportation claim seriously enough that the New York Times dispatched reporters to interview roughly two dozen workers and regulars at Rome's three Waffle House locations to investigate.

None of them, the Times found, could confirm anyone had arrived by paranormal means.

Schmidt, a founding partner of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project and one of the most prominent Republican critics of the president, reacted to the revelation with barely contained sarcasm in his Substack newsletter Saturday.

"I wonder if Pete Hegseth plans to deploy him in Iran as a secret weapon," Schmidt wrote.

The joke comes as the U.S. engages in ongoing military strikes against Iran, and an American pilot remains missing.

Schmidt used the episode as a launching pad for a broader indictment of the Trump administration, rattling off a roster of officials he described as "corrupt whack jobs" running the federal government.

"It seems the most powerful government in world history has fallen to the audience of midnight AM conspiracy radio," he wrote.

Phillips has not publicly responded to the Times investigation.

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