President Donald Trump took a surprise tour of Elvis Presley’s Graceland on Monday while in Memphis, a diversion from the war in Iran and efforts to address long lines at U.S. airports during which he marveled at just how famous the King of Rock and Roll was and wondered aloud if he could have beaten him in a fight.
Trump for years has played Presley’s music at his campaign rallies across the country and often compared himself to Presley. He was in Memphis for a roundtable on efforts to address crime in the city.
“I’m going to see Graceland after this, I think. Is that right?” Trump said during the meeting. “I love Elvis.”
Trump’s side trip to a top tourist attraction — which has at times ranked as the second most-visited private home in the U.S. after the White House — came as thousands of Americans across the country are wading through long lines at security checkpoints at airports, where Trump sent federal immigration officers to assist the Transportation Security Administration during an ongoing Homeland Security shutdown.
Also, though Trump was in Tennessee on Monday after ordering a “temporary” halt to planned strikes on Iranian power plants, American forces are still embroiled in the sprawling regional conflict.
The late singer’s stately home, with its stone facade and white columned entrance, is just a few miles from the site of the roundtable meeting, which was also attended by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Graceland opened as a museum and tourist attraction in 1982 as a tribute to Presley, the singer and actor who died in August 1977 at age 42.
Graceland temporarily closed down so Trump could take a brief private tour, including examining an Army helmet Presley scrawled his “EP” initials in after reporting to basic training in 1958. He also scoped out a bread warmer in the kitchen and traipsed through the den known as “the Jungle Room” because of its green shag carpet, Polynesian-style furniture and indoor rock waterfall.
Trump also marveled at Presley’s gold-plated Social Security card, suggesting that the style of card might be something authorities might want to bring back. Later, peering at Presley’s gold phone, the president offered, “I would like to hear some of those conversations.”
Tours of the home never include the bathroom where Presley died. But the president was handed a guitar to sign by a Graceland guide who pulled on gloves to handle special objects. The instrument was a replica of one used by Presley during his famous “Aloha From Hawaii” concert in 1973, the president was told.
After being told that Elvis had not actually played the guitar he’d signed, Trump grew reflective. “Could I have taken him in a fight?” he asked of Elvis, whom he lamented having never met.
“Who else would be more famous than Elvis?” he offered with a grin, when it was suggested that visitors could one day come to glimpse his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump’s campaign rally pre-show set list often includes some of Presley’s music, such as “Suspicious Minds,” “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” and a medley of “Dixie” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” At times, massive digital screens at his rallies would play videos of Presley’s concerts.
Trump has often compared himself to Elvis, once posting a composite photograph on social media with half Presley’s face on one side and his own on the other.
“For so many years people have been saying that Elvis and I look alike. Now this pic has been going all over the place,” Trump wrote. “What do you think?”
Later that year, he shared on social media a black-and-white image that depicted Trump standing alongside the singer as he played guitar.
Trump has also shouted out the late musician from the stage, opening a 2018 rally in Tupelo, Mississippi — Presley’s birthplace — by joking that people used to say that at one time he resembled him.
“We love Elvis. I shouldn’t say this, you’ll say I’m very conceited because I’m not, but other than the blonde hair when I was growing up they said I looked like Elvis, do you see that, can you believe it?”
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AP writer Will Weissert contributed from Washington. Kinnard reported from Chapin, S.C., and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP
