Did NBC News report that the news outlet was told that several of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' classmates "vaguely referred to an event known as the 'muffin incident'"? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that NBC News published a claim about a "muffin incident" and DeSantis. The article posted by the news outlet on DeSantis the same day the claim was posted does not mention a "muffin incident," and targeted searches for the phrase yielded zero results.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Twitter on July 18, 2023. It opened:
Additionally, several of Mr. DeSantis's classmates NBC News reporters spoke to vaguely referred to an event known as the 'muffin incident.' When pressed, none agreed to provide our reporters with more information. NBC News could not independently verify details of the incident or whether it actually occurred at all.
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Wed Jul 19 17:31:48 2023 UTC)
The image in the tweet appears to be a screengrab of a news article but is fabricated. A Google search of the key words "NBC News Desantis Muffin incident" yielded zero matching results. Had such a claim been reported and then deleted by NBC News, this would have been noticed by the DeSantis campaign or other news outlets but there have been no reports about this.
There is no record of the phrase "DeSantis muffin incident" on NBCNews.com.
An NBC News article on DeSantis published July 18, 2023, the same day as the tweet, had no mention of the "muffin incident" paragraph.
Lead Stories has reached out to NBC News for comment and will update the story when a response is received.
Here are other fact checks from Lead Stories about DeSantis.
