Billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman made a satirical Trump game - and it captures the spirit of 'the Resistance,' for better or worse

Hollis Johnson

Reid Hoffman's Trumped Up Cards is his variation of Apples to Apples or its offshoot, Cards Against Humanity.

• Billionaire LinkedIn founder and tech investor Reid Hoffman is also a prominent political donor who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Democrats.
• In January 2016, he and his team created a satirical Donald Trump game meant to entertain him and his friends. It's based on Apples to Apples and that game's edgier offshoot, Cards Against Humanity.
• Hoffman released a public version that September loaded with factual footnotes on playing cards, with the intention of encouraging people to vote against Trump.
• The game is still for sale, and there have been expansion packs since Trump's inauguration.
• We played the game for an hour, and while we had some fun moments, we thought it was trying to do too much from an activist perspective to be as enjoyable as it could be.

When we heard LinkedIn founder and Greylock Partners investor Reid Hoffman created an intricate card game making fun of President Donald Trump, the scenario sounded so outlandish we had to get our hands on it.

Hoffman is a billionaire who was a prominent Hillary Clinton donor during the 2016 presidential race and has given hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democrats. In January 2016, he decided to combine his lifelong passion for tabletop games with his passion for seeing Trump lose the election. After developing a version of "Trumped Up Cards" for his family and friends, he decided to release a polished version to the public that September.

When things didn't turn out for Hoffman and other Clinton voters, he decided he'd keep the game around and refresh it with booster packs, ostensibly to remind players to vote in the 2018 midterm elections.

"Inspired by 'The Daily Show' and 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,' we decided that satire that reveals the absurdity of our current situation is the only fitting response to these times," Hoffman wrote on Medium in September 2016.

Hoffman's team said that all profits from the game will go to charities, mentioning the ACLU.

We got a copy of the game and the two booster packs and arranged a time to play - Rich Feloni in the game and Hollis Johnson on photo duty - and invited some of our colleagues. We were joined by careers reporter Áine Caine, your money reporter Elena Holodny, global head of editorial partnerships Hayley Hudson, senior tech reporter Kif Leswing, video producer Manny Ocbazghi, and media reporter Max Tani.