Fifty-six years after the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” made an impromptu visit to the White House for a meeting with Richard Nixon, President Donald Trump is returning the favor with a stop at the late Elvis Presley’s Graceland estate.
Trump announced the pitstop Monday while making his way through meandering remarks to a law enforcement roundtable at a Tennessee Air National Guard hangar in Memphis.
The president recalled how his first thought months ago, when his administration’s Memphis Safe Task Force anti-crime effort was proposed, had been about how Memphis is the location of Presley’s iconic home.
The president’s jaunt to Graceland comes as tensions with Iran remain high following Trump’s claim that direct talks between the U.S. and Tehran were progressing, which Iran’s parliamentary speaker denied, and as gas prices surge.
“Memphis is known all over the world as the home of Graceland … you know, I’m going to see Graceland after this,” Trump said Monday, sitting beside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Continuing, he told the crowd of National Guard soldiers and federal law enforcement officials: “I love Elvis!”
“I never met Elvis — everyone said, ‘did you?’ — I met them all,” he said.
“I met Sinatra. I knew all of them. I never met Elvis. Sometimes I feel I should tell little fibs that I knew him … I love Elvis, but I never met him. But I’m going to go see Graceland after this,” Trump added.
Trump has previously claimed he and Presley look alike. Last year, he posted a split-image of his face with Presley’s during a late-night Truth Social spree, without any comment.
And in 2024, he shared the same image and asked his followers, “For so many years people have been saying that Elvis and I look alike. Now this pic has been going all over the place. What do you think?”
Presley, who died in 1977, famously engineered an encounter with one of Trump’s predecessors when he showed up at the White House’s northwest gate in December 1970.
According to the White House Historical Association, Presley arrived with a six-page letter to Nixon asking to be made an “Federal Agent at Large” with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the precursor to today’s Drug Enforcement Agency).
Graceland, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the U.S., is a few miles from where Trump’s roundtable event with law enforcement took place.
While in Memphis, Trump told reporters that he believed there was “a very good chance” the U.S. would reach a deal with Iran to bring an end to the conflict, which has raged since the end of February.
“We were planning tomorrow on shooting down some of their power plants, we’re gonna hold that up, hopefully we won’t have to do it,” Trump said. “I think there’s a very good chance we’re going to end up with a deal and so we’re giving it five days and then we’re going to see where that takes us.”
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