‘Live and Let Die’ blasts as Trump visits mask factory

As President Trump toured an N95 mask manufacturing plant in Phoenix on Tuesday, his visit through the facility was accompanied by a head-scratching musical soundtrack: the Paul McCartney-penned “Live and Let Die,” as performed by Guns ‘N Roses.

The president and his entourage were touring a Honeywell factory that produces the masks, worn by medical workers to protect them from breathing in the deadly COVID-19 virus. Standing next to a green bin filled with hundreds of masks, a notably un-face-masked Trump watched an employee work as the music segued from the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” into the song McCartney wrote and recorded for the James Bond film of the same name.

The background music for the tour also included Trump rally stalwarts such as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”

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In a tweet, Jimmy Kimmel noted: “I can think of no better metaphor for this presidency than Donald Trump not wearing a face mask to a face mask factory while the song ‘Live and Let Die’ blares in the background.”

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The song’s climactic blast of music arrived as a Honeywell representative was explaining to the president the ways in which the mask’s material protects against particulates. As he was doing so, Rose could be heard yowling, “If this ever-changing world in which we live in / Makes you give in and cry / say live and let die.”

Needless to say, it wasn’t just Kimmel confounded by the scene.

So far, Rose, an outspoken Trump critic, has yet to comment. But a few years ago he called the president the “gold standard of what can be considered disgraceful.” More recently, he tweeted a photo of an anti-Trump baseball cap.