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 was making his way through meandering remarks to a law enforcement roundtable at a Tennessee Air National Guard hangar in Memphis when he 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.
“Memphis is known all over the world as the home of Graceland … you know, I’m going to see Graceland after this,” he said.
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.
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).
More follows…
About the Author
