Looks like he monkeyed that up, now race baiters are going to lose their minds while ignoring the content of what he was saying.
Really? What a bigoted b*stard. He's doing Gillum a favor by boosting the Democratic turnout in November. This comment will get a lot of play.
Fair enough, to "monkey with" something is to handle it in a careless way, to "monkey up" something is to mess something up due to handling it in a careless way. The statement was essentially don't screw around and let a left wing candidate make it into office that will push what he calls a "socialist agenda". I would have thought that would be obvious to anyone with a decent command of the English language.
Well, I explained it above for those who had never heard it before and couldn't figure it out. Ah, now the person is a bigot simply because you don't understand English well enough to know what he was saying? Pretty much exactly what I would expect from you.
Regardless of whether or not it was an innocent comment or a racist comment, it was a stupid thing to say.
I think we all figured it out for what it was even with you defending his statement if that's truly what he meant by it he should have said it .
Although it is a semi-common old timey phrase that means "to mess up" or "mess with" it is the context and the person delivering the message that is important here. @No Worries already nailed it. This was a deliberate choice of words. The intended target audience understand it at a visceral level and leave it to the sycophants to spin it as a harmless euphemism.
He did say it....just because some people are pretending to not understand doesn't change that. It's not like he said something new. Here's a visual interpretation of the idiom. It's 2 people that don't know how to turn on a computer monekeying with it in a very exaggerated manner.