Trump makes unscheduled trip to Graceland while visiting Memphis for roundtable. All while waging war in Iran
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 returned the favor with a stop at the late Elvis Presley’s Graceland estate.
Trump was given a tour of the mansion Monday afternoon after he proclaimed his love for Presley during meandering remarks to a law enforcement roundtable at a Tennessee Air National Guard hangar in Memphis.
The president, accompanied by Attorney General Pam Bondi, said it was his first time visiting the famed estate, where Presley is buried alongside his mother, Gladys.
His jaunt to Graceland comes as his war on Iran continues, with Iran denying Trump’s claims that direct talks between the two sides were progressing, and as gas prices surge for Americans.
“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.
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.
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.
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).
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?”
The Graceland estate was inherited by Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie, upon the rock icon’s death and was opened to the public as a museum in 1982. The 13.8-acre estate attracts around half a million visitors each year, as fans make a pilgrimage to pay tribute to the late singer.
