Shortly after professing his love for Elvis Presley, President Donald Trump appeared stumped when asked for his favorite song by the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” while on an impromptu tour of his Graceland estate.
The president took a last-minute tour Monday of the famed mansion in Memphis after attending a law enforcement roundtable at a Tennessee Air National Guard hangar.
Trump told the crowd of National Guard soldiers and federal law enforcement officials, “I love Elvis!” before revealing that he planned to stop by Graceland, a few miles away.
During a lull in the tour, as he was ushered into the “Jungle Room,” Presley’s den at Graceland, Trump asked reporters if they had a question for him about the late singer, and was immediately quizzed on his favorite track.
After a few seconds without coming up with a single Presley title, he finally defaulted to the tour guide.
“She just mentioned one of them...Hurt,” Trump replied, referring to the King's 1976 cover song he released a little over a year before his death, and which was far less well known than his classics like Love Me Tender, Heartbreak Hotel and Hound Dog, among many others.
Hurt, a 1954 cover originally performed by Roy Hamilton, was not included in Presley’s greatest hits compilations, including the 2000 release Elvis Presley: The 50 Greatest Hits.
“He's got so many. There's very few I don't like,” Trump quickly added in the awkward exchange.
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.
The Graceland estate was inherited by Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie, upon the rock and roll icon’s 1977 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.
During the earlier roundtable event, 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 that he “loved” Presley, but never met the star.
“I met Sinatra. I knew all of them. I never met Elvis,” Trump said. “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, who was still a relatively unknown real estate developer when Elvis was nearing the tragic end of his life, has previously compared himself to the man fans simply call, “The King.” 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 President Richard 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).
His jaunt to Graceland comes as he continued to wage war on Iran and as gas prices surge for Americans.
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