I WANT HER LOCKED UP
Read two quotes from the same Sunday morning and guess the party.
Sunday, Oct. 18, 10:00 AM ET. Barack Obama on X: “It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say.” By Monday morning, X’s counter showed more than 10 million views.
Same morning, CBS’s Face the Nation. Margaret Brennan asks state Rep. Angie Nixon, Florida’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, about her line that Republican Sen. Ashley Moody should be “locked up and punished in jail.” Nixon’s answer: “It’s not a desire to weaponize the justice system. It’s designed to actually hold corrupt politicians accountable for what they’re doing.”
Four days earlier, on CNN, Nixon didn’t bother with the softer version. Calling Moody a “lying, cheating, thieving, scamming person,” she waved off ads saying she wants to abolish prisons: “Why would I want to do that when I want her locked up and punished in jail for what she has done?” Kasie Hunt checked that she heard it right. “Basically, yes,” Nixon said, and then: “I absolutely would want that to happen,” per Mediaite’s transcript and Fox News.
I WANT HER LOCKED UP. Swap the parties and you already know how this reads. A Republican Senate candidate says it about a Democrat three weeks before an election, and by lunch it’s in a fundraising email about the death of democracy.
Watch: CNN’s The Arena with Kasie Hunt, Oct. 14. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., sat beside her and, per Fox News, did not weigh in.
The $10 million nobody remembers
To be fair to Nixon, there is a real story under the slogan. In 2024, Florida settled with Centene, parent company of the Medicaid contractor Sunshine Health, over allegations it overcharged Medicaid. Of the $67 million settlement, the state got $57 million and $10 million went to the Hope Florida Foundation, the support group for first lady Casey DeSantis’ signature initiative. Within weeks the foundation made two $5 million grants, to Secure Florida’s Future and Save Our Society From Drugs. Those groups sent money to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee chaired by James Uthmeier, then DeSantis’ chief of staff and now Florida’s attorney general, which was fighting the 2024 recreational marijuana amendment, per Florida Politics.
A Republican, state Rep. Alex Andrade, started pulling that thread in spring 2025. A Leon County grand jury followed. Its sealed report, published by CBS News Miami in August, concluded the money was “misappropriated” as part of “a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.” It said Moody, then attorney general, was aware of the plan and “authorized” her chief deputy to sign the deal. And it said this, per WLRN: “Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida.” The grand jury charged no one, citing insufficient evidence.
Moody’s answer, posted on social media: “The AG’s office had no knowledge of how funds would be spent or played any role in how Hope Florida, AHCA or the legislature would spend the settlement money.” She denies wrongdoing. She has not been charged with anything. Uthmeier has defended the deal as lawful.
Then on Oct. 7, Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeal ordered the report expunged in full. In the opinion, the court said a grand jury “may not condemn people by name without indicting them,” and that the $10 million “was never public money.” Critics can argue with that ruling. Nixon does, telling Brennan the judge was appointed by DeSantis. But here is the record as it stands: a grand jury that indicted nobody, in a report a court has ordered erased. That’s the case for a jail cell. It doesn’t make the deal clean. It makes “locked up” a verdict nobody has earned the right to announce.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and first lady Casey DeSantis at a Hope Florida conference in July 2024. A $10 million slice of a Medicaid overbilling settlement went to the Hope Florida Foundation that fall. Credit: Office of the Governor of Florida, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
We’ve heard this chant before
July 2016, Cleveland. “Lock her up” was the Republican convention’s unofficial slogan, and retired Gen. Michael Flynn led it from the stage. That October, at the second presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said it was “awfully good” that someone with Donald Trump’s temperament was not in charge of the law. Trump shot back: “Because you’d be in jail.”
Democrats spent the next ten years treating that line as a warning siren. Brennan said as much to Nixon on Sunday: Democrats “have expressed discomfort with some Republicans using that kind of language.” Obama’s post went further. He wrote that Trump’s Justice Department “has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies,” and warned that future presidents “in either party” could do the same. On CNN, when Hunt asked about an Obama endorsement, Nixon said she’d be excited. She might want to read his Sunday post first.
Nixon isn’t the only Democrat warming up the handcuffs. At a Vox podcast taping on Oct. 13, Sen. Elissa Slotkin said a Democratic Congress should pick “signature cases” against Trump officials, because “They have no immunity the way the president does.” The point, she said, is to make young graduates think twice about taking those jobs: “I want that deterrence message sent,” per Newsmax via Yahoo News. Slotkin knows how the other end feels. In February, a D.C. grand jury refused to indict her and five other Democratic lawmakers over their “illegal orders” video, a case pursued by Jeanine Pirro’s office.
“Hillary for Prison 2016” and “Trump” yard signs on a lawn in July 2016, the month the Republican convention made “Lock her up” its unofficial slogan. Credit: David Mulder, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Ten years ago the chant came from the right. This year it’s coming from a Democratic Senate nominee on CNN. Same chant. Different jersey.
“Communist playbook,” says the party of the chant
Republicans were ready. Moody’s campaign spokesman, Cameron Gambini, told Fox News: “Wanting to throw your political opponents in jail is a tactic straight from the Communist playbook.” An RNC spokeswoman said questions should be asked about why Nixon “wants to jail her political opponents.”
Agreed. Now say it about Cleveland. Say it about “Because you’d be in jail.” Say it about a Justice Department that indicted former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, two cases a federal judge threw out in November 2025 after finding the prosecutor had been unlawfully appointed.
And say it about Florida, because in this same Hope Florida story, the people now clutching their pearls keep reaching for handcuffs. Asked about the grand jury report in August, Uthmeier called it “a politically motivated witch hunt” and asked a reporter, “Are you trying to solicit a crime here in violation of the law?” CBS News Miami reported. On Oct. 8, DeSantis said: “Whoever leaked this report needs to be prosecuted.” On Sunday, Florida Politics reported the appeals court has ordered State Attorney Jack Campbell, whose office ran the grand jury, to explain under oath how the unredacted report reached CBS News Miami.
Fair point to Republicans on that one: the court found Campbell’s office sent the report to people who weren’t entitled to it, and the leak deserves an answer. But look at the whole board. In Florida this fall, everybody wants somebody prosecuted: the senator, the leaker, the reporter asking questions. The one person nobody can name is whoever decided to send $10 million of a Medicaid settlement to the foundation behind the first lady’s initiative.
Gov. Ron DeSantis announces his appointment of then-Attorney General Ashley Moody to the U.S. Senate in Orlando on Jan. 16, 2025. She faces Angie Nixon in the Nov. 3 election for the seat. Credit: Government of Florida, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Lock-up, both directions
Nixon’s Sunday version, “I want an investigation done,” is a fair thing for a candidate to say. “Locked up and punished in jail” is not. One is a question. The other is a verdict, announced by someone who wants a vote on the next attorney general.
And look who she wants to investigate: “I would like the Department of Justice to investigate.” That’s the same Justice Department that Obama, whose endorsement she’d welcome, said Sunday goes after the president’s enemies. Either it’s a weapon or it’s a referee. You don’t get to decide which, depending on who’s in the dock.
The court that erased the Hope Florida report quoted an old Florida Supreme Court case about what’s wrong with condemning people outside a courtroom: it happens “without indictment, without published evidence, without trial, and without due process of law.” That standard protects Moody. It protected Clinton. It protects Omar. It would protect Nixon too. Investigate anyone. Charge in court. Convict on evidence. Never chant the verdict, from either stage.
What I want to see this week: Nixon drop “locked up” and keep “investigate.” Moody take reporters’ questions on the settlement in person; WLRN reported she left a Doral event billed as a press conference without taking any. DeSantis and Uthmeier tell Floridians who decided on the $10 million. And every Republican who called it the “Communist playbook” this week say the same thing about 2016.
Want to see who funds this race? Moody’s campaign had raised $11.27 million this cycle through July 29, per FEC filings on our Ashley Moody Money Trail. See the rest of the Florida delegation on our Follow the Money map, and track the outside groups with the PACTracker.
Next time your side starts the chant, ask who’s holding the evidence. If the answer is “the crowd,” sit that one out.
Receipts
- Barack Obama on X, Oct. 18, 2026. “Basic principle of American democracy”; DOJ “has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies”; “in either party.”
- CBS News: Face the Nation transcript, Oct. 18, 2026. Brennan’s “locked up” question and “discomfort” line; Nixon: “not a desire to weaponize the justice system,” “I want an investigation done,” DOJ request.
- CNN: The Arena with Kasie Hunt video, Oct. 14, 2026. Watch link. Mediaite, Oct. 15, 2026 (transcript, Obama endorsement question) and Fox News, Oct. 15, 2026 (Gambini and RNC statements; Murphy silent; Moody denies wrongdoing).
- CBS News Miami, Aug. 27, 2026. Grand jury on Moody and Uthmeier; Moody’s statement; Uthmeier’s “solicit a crime” remark. WLRN, Aug. 28, 2026. “Nobody will take responsibility”; no charges; Moody left Doral event without questions.
- CBS News Miami, Oct. 7, 2026 and 1st DCA opinion, No. 1D2026-2435 (PDF). Report expunged; “never public money”; “without indictment, without published evidence, without trial.”
- Florida Politics, Oct. 18, 2026. Settlement and grant chain; Andrade inquiry; Campbell show-cause order; DeSantis: “Whoever leaked this report needs to be prosecuted.”
- CNN, July 19, 2016. “Lock her up” as the convention’s unofficial slogan. C-SPAN clip. Flynn leads the chant. CBS News: second presidential debate transcript, Oct. 9, 2016. “Because you’d be in jail.”
- Newsmax via Yahoo News, Oct. 18, 2026. Slotkin’s “signature cases” and “deterrence message.” AP: grand jury refuses to indict lawmakers. The “illegal orders” video case.
- AP: judge dismisses cases against James Comey and Letitia James. Prosecutor unlawfully appointed.
- Earlier Hypocrisy Democracy: MAKE HIM GIVE PROOF; SET THE PRECEDENT. Reader tools: Ashley Moody Money Trail; Florida on the Follow the Money map; PACTracker.
Upgrade
Free readers see this section as Upgrade to paid. Paid readers pick 1 meme sticker from the Etsy shop HypocrisyDemocracy, plus quarterly sticker packs, discounts and bonus content.
If you haven’t subscribed, now’s a good time. Everything here stays free, always. But pieces like this take days of research, writing, and fact checking, and if you’d like to support that work, paid subscriptions are there. Thank you for your support!
Thanks for reading, sharing, and commenting.
Subscribe. Donate. Hypocrisy Democracy. Hypocrisydemocracy@pm.me.
Originally published on Substack.
