Days before the midterm elections, President Trump shared a surreal image of his face alongside Elvis Presley on social media, and then while people scratched their heads about it, he went on to claim he could have won the Vietnam War in just a week.
The photo of half-Elvis, half-Trump was shown on a screen at a rally, and then posted on Truth Social with the image only, no explanation.
The Daily Beast described it this way: "Donald Trump has signed off ahead of the midterms by begging supporters to reassure him he totally looks like one of the 20th century’s defining sex symbols."
During the same rally in Iowa where his Elvis-Trump morphed photo displayed on the stage, Trump said: "Vietnam, 21 years, thousands and thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands of people killed ... Afghanistan, years and years…we never fight to win."
He added: "I don't know what we do," he added, "they're stupid, stupid presidents."
And then it took a strange left turn when he tacked on, "I could have won the Vietnam War in a week, you know," he said. "They dropped whatever the hell that red crap is that they…kept dropping it in the forest."
Although he was there to try to drum up support for GOP candidates in the midterms, the talk stayed on Vietnam for a beat while the audience reminded him the word he was searching for was Agent Orange.
"Agent Orange," Trump responded to members of the audience who shouted the answer to him, "even though it's red." "Agent Orange, they drop it in the forest for years and years and years, instead of going after Ho Chi Minh City and the different places," he continued. "I would have won that war in one week."
America used Agent Orange, an herbicide, in Vietnam from 1962 to 1971, records show, in a desperate attempt to remove the foliage that helped provide cover for the enemy. The chemical was later discovered to be toxic to humans and to the soil where it landed
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs links Agent Orange to cancer, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and peripheral neuropathy.
But it has no known connection to the midterms.
The rhetoric followed Trump's usual claims on the campaign trail about being able to end wars -- like the Israel-Iran conflict, and Russia's attacks on Ukraine -- in a matter of days if he were president. In office, however, the wars drag on, and more have been added to the mix, including the U.S. vs Iran and attacks on Venezuela.
With the election Tuesday, those conflicts, plus rising prices, and inflation, are considered the top issues that will mobilize voters.
Donald Trump/Truth Social
The president does seem to have a fixation with the King of rock n' roll. Trump visited Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee in March 2025. During the tour, he viewed Elvis's memorabilia, and signed a replica guitar with a gold Sharpie. He's also posted AI generated pictures of himself as Elvis, and himself as Jesus Christ.
Seven years ago, it generated headlines when Trump told a rally crowd that he looked like Elvis.
"We love Elvis ... You'll say I'm very conceited, but I'm not. Other than the blonde hair, they used to say I looked like Elvis. You see that? Can you believe it? I've always considered it a great compliment. We love Elvis, don't we?"
