People think Joe Scarborough just burped on a Morning Joe hot mic

Did he burp, or did he not burp — that is the question. Or at least it was, albeit temporarily, for anyone who caught wind of Joe Scarborough’s interesting commentary on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” until he personally denied the gaseous gossip.

The suspected expulsion of air occurred while Scarborough’s co-host Willie Geist addressed school districts in Florida, who are seeking to issue new mandates despite Governor DeSantis’ threat to defund schools that do that exact thing. As Geist says, “that challenges the governor’s order that threatens to remove funds from schools if they mandate students wear face-covering,” Scarborough can be heard, off-camera, making a noise that sounds quite like a burp, or like the words “duh” or “dumb.” But mainly a burp — and people took note.

And apparently, it wasn’t the first time. Twitter users took to the app inform the MSNBC correspondents of a similar incident several weeks ago, as well.

This time, however, Scarborough almost immediately refuted the belch claims, tweeting that the suspicious sound was not a burp, but his response to Governor DeSantis’ “strange press conference ending.” According to Scarborough, the strange sound we heard was actually him saying the word “duh” twice, going onto insinuate that he was imitating, or making some sort of reference to, “Cletus,” an obscure character from The Simpsons.

Indeed, upon further analysis, Cletus has appeared in multiple episodes of The Simpsons. Upon viewing — and listening for — Cletus’ belches in a montage of the character’s “greatest moments,” however, none were to be heard.