The stately home, with its stone facade and white columned entrance, is just a few kilometres from the site of the meeting, also attended by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney-General Pam Bondi.
US President Donald Trump tours Graceland.Getty Images
Trump’s side trip to a top tourist attraction – which has at times ranked as the second most-visited private home in the US after the White House. It opened as a museum and tourist attraction in 1982 as a tribute to Presley, the singer and actor who died in 1977 at age 42.
Graceland temporarily closed down so Trump could take a brief private tour, including examining an Army helmet scrawled with Presley’s initials. 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 marvelled at Presley’s gold-plated Social Security card, suggesting authorities might want to bring back that style of card. Later, peering at Presley’s gold phone, the president offered, “I would like to hear some of those conversations.”
Donald Trump holds up replica of an Elvis Presley guitar after signing it.AP
He 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.
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.
AP