Trump is selling memberships.
From the moment the stage crew (click here) began to set up Donald Trump's lectern on the stage at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), there was a change in the atmosphere.
Part of it was the lectern itself. Heavy enough to require handing by several workers and equipped with its own hardshell travel cover, the design of the stand Mr Trump has used during recent public appearances evokes – perhaps deliberately – the “Blue Goose” the famous lectern used by whoever the sitting president of the United States might be on any given day.
Whether use of the ersatz presidential speaking stand – devoid of the seal which now travels with the man who defeated Mr Trump in November 2020 – was Mr Trump’s deliberate choice meant to keep a presidential aura around him or a selection made by the security detail charged with keeping the ex-president alive because the lectern is (like its more famous doppelganger) bulletproof, Mr Trump’s representatives would not say in response to queries from The Independent (though one agent stationed in the CPAC press area said the agency “doesn't get involved in his lectern decisions, but we couldn’t tell you if we did anyway”)....
Part of it was the lectern itself. Heavy enough to require handing by several workers and equipped with its own hardshell travel cover, the design of the stand Mr Trump has used during recent public appearances evokes – perhaps deliberately – the “Blue Goose” the famous lectern used by whoever the sitting president of the United States might be on any given day.
Whether use of the ersatz presidential speaking stand – devoid of the seal which now travels with the man who defeated Mr Trump in November 2020 – was Mr Trump’s deliberate choice meant to keep a presidential aura around him or a selection made by the security detail charged with keeping the ex-president alive because the lectern is (like its more famous doppelganger) bulletproof, Mr Trump’s representatives would not say in response to queries from The Independent (though one agent stationed in the CPAC press area said the agency “doesn't get involved in his lectern decisions, but we couldn’t tell you if we did anyway”)....
