Jake Paul is being taken to task for claiming that a reporter “misquoted” him on his COVID-19 stance.
The YouTube star claimed that his words were “taken out of context” when he referred to coronavirus as a “hoax” during a recent interview with The Daily Beast‘s Marlow Stern.
RELATED: Jake Paul Faces Backlash For Throwing A Large Party In California Amid Coronavirus Outbreak
Denying that he made the comments, he told The Verge, “So this guy, this reporter, he misquoted me. He took what I said out of context, and I told him that. I told him that the whole entire time.”
He continued, “COVID is very, very real. COVID is very real, like, it’s killed so many people. It’s killed people I know. It’s killed someone very, very close to me. So that’s what I’m saying. I don’t even know where that came from.”
In response, Stern took to Twitter on Friday to share audio from his interview with Paul.
Here's the audio of @JakePaul telling me COVID is "a hoax," that America should open back up, and comparing it to the flu: https://t.co/bqQKvQrUjs
— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) November 27, 2020
RELATED: Tyler Oakley Calls Out Jake Paul For Defending Partying Amid Pandemic
After stating his belief that the U.S. needs to “open up and go back to normal” in the recording, Paul says, “there are people losing jobs, there are small businesses who are going bankrupt, there are millions of people who are unemployed right now, people are turning to alcohol and drugs to cope with everything that’s going on. This is the most detrimental thing to our society. COVID cases are at less than 1%, and I think the disease is a hoax.”
He added, “You know, 98% of news is fake, so how do we know what’s actually real, and what we’re actually supposed to do?”
