I want to talk about the phrase “monkey it up,” because as someone who managed a car repair shop in Texas, I know what that phrase means.
A lot of people have been commenting that “monkey it up” is not a phrase people say. And it’s true that when you google the phrase and filter out today’s news, you won’t find much.
But you will find a couple of references to the phrase on car repair forums. The phrase means “messing up a repair badly because you don’t know what you’re doing.” Here are a couple of examples. It is very, very common in southern repair shops. 
And importantly, the phrase is a first-cousin of another more well-known racist phrase, “n*****-rigging.” It has the same meaning.
When a redneck auto mechanic scolds a colleague for “monkeying something up,” it means he did the repair like a black person would do it.
The same thing holds true for a far-right wing GOP governor candidate from Florida.
Another great Texas auto shop anecdote:
If you're curious, come learn about the origin of related phrases, such as "grease monkey," "monkey wrench," and "jury rigged," which has nothing to do with a courtroom.
Let's me be clear. I concede you can use the phrase ignorant of its cultural baggage, especially outside the south (that's how dog whistles work). But in my job, I knew what it meant when a white Florida mechanic said "Give me this job, not Darnell, he's gonna monkey it up."
Another story because this is getting attention: One day my wife is at day care playing with the kids. A girl something silly, and my wife says "What are you doing, you little monkey?" As she said it, she was paralyzed. The little girl was black. So are two of the aides.
My wife calls my son "little monkey," but this was different. She was mortified at herself. She's an upper middle class lawyer, but raised in rural Texas, and hyper-aware of how bad this was. Because here, the word "monkey" means something awful when juxtaposed with black folk.
And my wife slipped up. She meant nothing bad, but it was wildly inappropriate. But what we saw from DeSantis looks nothing like a slip up. You might call a kid "monkey" if you routinely calls kids monkeys, as my wife does. But "monkey it up" about your black opponent? Please.
