The website of the Strategic National Stockpile was edited on Friday to soften language about how the stockpile is supposed to be used by states -- a day after media outlets reported that the original version contradicted a claim by senior White House official Jared Kushner.
Kushner, President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, said at Thursday's coronavirus briefing that states themselves have medical equipment stockpiled -- and argued that "the notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile; it's not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use."
Journalists and others quickly pointed out that the federal stockpile's own website made clear Kushner was wrong.
As of early Friday morning, the stockpile's home page had read: "Strategic National Stockpile is the nation's largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out. When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency. Organized for scalable response to a variety of public health threats, this repository contains enough supplies to respond to multiple large-scale emergencies simultaneously."
These sentences were gone as of Friday afternoon. In their place were new sentences that emphasized that the stockpile is meant as a temporary backup for states' own supplies.
The revised page reads: "The Strategic National Stockpile's role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available."
