President Trump detoured on a trip to Memphis on Monday to visit Graceland, the estate of Elvis Presley, amid a war with Iran and other crises at home and abroad.
Mr. Trump was in Memphis to highlight his show of force carried out by the National Guard and federal agents in the predominantly Black city — where the police have a long history of excessive force and racial profiling. With a cache of seized guns stacked in front of him at a round-table event, Mr. Trump revealed to an applauding audience that he would visit Elvis’s estate.
As he entered the Graceland mansion, Mr. Trump asked aloud: “Who doesn’t love Elvis? Everybody loves Elvis!” A Presidential Medal of Freedom, which Mr. Trump had posthumously awarded to Elvis during his first term, was on display nearby.
With his attorney general, Pam Bondi, in tow, the president spoke at length of his affection for the king of rock ’n’ roll as he toured the Graceland mansion. In what appeared to be an effort to stay on topic, the president claimed that Elvis would “be very happy” about the deployment of federal forces in Memphis.
Minutes later, the president was signing a replica of one of Elvis’ guitars with a golden Sharpie.
“Just give me a piece of paper to make sure,” said Mr. Trump, who worried about the possibility that he had been given a defective pen that would “ruin the guitar.” After signing the replica, he added that “Biden couldn’t do this,” alluding to Mr. Trump’s fixation on his predecessor’s use of an autopen.
Upon being informed that Elvis had been a karate master, Mr. Trump asked an employee of the estate if he could have beaten Presley in a fistfight. She demurred, while another staffer suggested that “he would have been respectful enough to let you win.”
Reflecting his advanced age, Mr. Trump, 79, noted that he had been around long enough to see Elvis at his peak. Presley was most prolific in music and film in the 1950s and early ’60s, though he remained a cultural force into the 1970s.
But throughout the tour, the president lamented that he had never met The King.
“For some reason I didn’t know him,” Mr. Trump said. “I knew just about everybody else, knew all of them, but I don’t know why with Elvis.” Earlier in the day, during his event focusing on law enforcement, Mr. Trump mused that “sometimes I feel I should tell a little fib — say I knew him well.”
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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