Presidential lecterns of the United States
[8] Custom-built by the WHCA under the presidency of George W. Bush, the Falcon lectern has a sleeker, hourglass-like shape with a plinth wider at the base and trimmer at the top.
[13][14] Academics have argued that the lectern accentuated his position as a singular presidential figure and contradicted expectations that the meetings would be informal and authentic, resembling more of a "press conference".
[15] On May 16, 1991, Queen Elizabeth II made remarks from the Blue Goose at a White House welcoming ceremony alongside President George H. W. Bush.
Due to the fixed height of the lectern at the time, only her hat was visible to television audiences; she quipped the next day while addressing a joint session of Congress that “I do hope you can see me today from where you are.”[16][4][8] On January 26, 1998, for Bill Clinton's press conference addressing the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal, a modified version of the Blue Goose was used, replacing the Shure SM57 microphones normally used for the lecterns with a 16-inch condenser microphone.
[7] Journalists noted that Bush used the Blue Goose more sparingly than Carter had done, usually only in the Rose Garden or East Room of the White House, with the intent of reserving presidential symbols for major events.
[19] At a Fortune's Most Powerful Women summit in 2010, the presidential seal fell off the Blue Goose in the middle of a speech by Barack Obama, who joked that "that's all right, all of you know who I am," and that the staff who had set up the lectern would be "sweating bullets".
[1] On May 26, 2017, Sean Spicer and Gary Cohn commented on one of the lecterns in a hotel room while at the NATO Brussels summit, stating "this is ours," and "we own it," in reference to their prominence on the world stage.
In 2015, BuzzFeed News reported that Aaron Schock was using an unofficial replica of the Falcon lectern, for which he had spent about $5,000 using a taxpayer-funded account, when speaking in Peoria, Illinois.
[10] In June 2023, the office of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Governor of Arkansas, purchased a custom 39-inch replica of the Falcon lectern with an accompanying road case from Beckett Events LLC for $19,029.25, using a state-issued credit card.
The audit stated that Sanders' office potentially violated laws, including illegally tampering with public records and shredding a bill of lading associated with the lectern.
