Welcome to our Reid Hoffman Video Explainer page where you can read and follow the sources used to create the lines of this video.
‘You’re so LinkedIn as a connected man among the big tech nerds…’
Tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman first came to semi-prominence as an executive for online payment processor PayPal (among a larger contingent of Internet pioneers, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who have been called the “PayPal mafia”), but is best known as the highest-profile co-founder of the business-oriented social media website LinkedIn. He is known — as are many of the billionaire Silicon Valley tech celebrities — to have business and/or personal friendships with other icons of the industry, including Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg.
‘…you recommended Jeffrey Epstein to your friends as a smart fun perv…’
In 2014, Hoffman and a colleague visited the famed Little St. James island of now-deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, according to the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported that Hoffman recommended that his former “Paypal mafia” colleague, Peter Thiel, meet Epstein, as part of his and Epstein’s efforts to raise money for the MIT Media Lab. According to the Journal:
“Meet one of the guys who invented derivatives, Jeffrey Epstein?” Hoffman wrote, echoing an inaccurate claim Epstein sometimes made. Hoffman wrote that Epstein was “mostly fun, very interesting guy, you may find him perverse, but very smart on biology, computation, macro econ.”
Hence the video’s “smart, fun, perv” characterization.
‘You traveled to Epstein Island where all the pretty girls, they were young…
“Epstein Island,” formally Little St. James, had a reputation and solely-known purpose for one thing: taking advantage of and trafficking young women and many underage girls for the fulfillment of Epstein’s — and presumably his “clients” — sexual appetites. By the time Hoffman visited there in 2014, Epstein had already been convicted in the state of Florida (in 2008) for child prostitution.
‘…now no one knows just what you did ’cause Epstein — he got hung!’
While awaiting trial incarcerated in New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, Epstein was found dead, with the official medical examiner’s ruling of suicide by hanging, which many disbelieve.
‘Your TDS is so severe you want 45 to be tarred — so much you funded campaign lies, and a Trumpy deck of cards!’
TDS stands for “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” which Hoffman and many on the political left — and a few Republicans — suffer from.
See NLPC’s page on Hoffman, which includes detailed explanations about his campaign finance and political tactics, as well as his funding of lawfare against former President Trump (No. 45). Also learn more about Hoffman’s obsessive, yet secretive, activities in investigative reports by Restoration News, and in archived posts at NLPC.
Hoffman even stooped to juvenile levels in his blinding obsession against President Trump. During the 2016 campaign he created “Trumped Up Cards,” a satirical multi-player game. He promoted it on his personal Medium page as “The World’s Biggest Deck.”
‘You paid for all that lawfare so Jean Carroll could get big bucks…’
Hoffman donated heavily to a nonprofit organization that contributed $620,000 to a legal defense fund for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that created the debunked Steele dossier behind the Russian investigation hoax of the Trump administration. Through yet another nonprofit (or possibly the same one), Hoffman also has paid the legal bills for Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll, who sued him for defamation over her allegations of rape against him going back to the 1990s. To set the stage for the lawsuit to be able to move forward – through yet another secretive nonprofit group backed by Hoffman – Carroll told CNN that she helped New York Democrats to pass a new law in 2022 to extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault civil lawsuits beyond 20 years, which enabled her to sue President Trump during a one-year window.
A New York judge and jury found against President Trump regarding the defamation claim, despite agreeing that Carroll wasn’t raped by the former president. The case is being appealed.
After being awarded $83 million in a judgment against Trump, Carroll appeared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC program with her lawyers. Maddow asked what she planned to do with the money, and Carroll replied enthusiastically:
I had such, such great ideas for all the good I’m gonna do with this money. First thing Rachel, you and I are gonna go shopping! We’re gonna get complete new wardrobes, new shoes, motorcycle for [Carroll’s attorney Shawn] Crowley, a new fishing rod for Robbie [Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan] – Rachel, what do you want? A penthouse? It’s yours, Rachel! Penthouse and France? You want France? You want to go fishing in France? No?
‘…and you want a new town in California, ’cause Frisco really sucks!’
In September 2023 it was revealed that Hoffman was one of several billionaires who were invested in a project that for five years was secretly buying farmland in rural Solano County, Calif. – situated between San Francisco and Sacramento – for the purposes of building a “green” and “walkable” city. The project was, and is, called by its proponents “California Forever.” Acquired under the guise of an LLC called “Flannery Associates,” the identities of the backers were kept anonymous until much later. A Congressman who represents nearby Travis Air Force Base, Democrat Rep. John Garamendi, said the Flannery group has “totally poison[ed] the well” with the community by virtue of their underhandedness. Locals accused the group of “mobster tactics” in their efforts to secure the land they want to build their utopia, by threatening litigation and playing farmers against one another.
‘With all that girth you may not gin up too much sensual ardor…’
Hoffman likes food:
His one weakness is for fine dining. On a Saturday evening in Palo Alto, Hoffman and [wife Michelle] Yee enjoy a five-hour molecular- gastronomy dinner at Baumè, famed for its 62-degree egg with green lentils in a vermouth zabaglione. It’s not until the third of 13 courses that I first hear Hoffman’s customary reflectiveness give way to a palpable irritation…
‘…and you’re also sad that you couldn’t make ‘ol Trump an ‘actual martyr”
In the summer of 2024 Hoffman reportedly commented about Donald Trump, which came roughly a day before an assassination attempt against the former president at his campaign rally in Butler, Pa. Hoffman’s comments appeared to condone political violence against the frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election.
The comments were reportedly made at Allen & Company’s Sun Valley Conference 2024. According to Puck News:
Peter Thiel sarcastically thanked Reid Hoffman for funding lawsuits against Trump because they had turned him into “a martyr,” increasing his chances of re-election.
From the stage, Hoffman shot back with his own sarcastic quip: “Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr.”
Rather than unreservedly apologize, Hoffman offered a “clarification,” then later engaged in blame-shifting.
‘You’re on the board of Microsoft, but you really shouldn’t be. You think you make a lot of sense, but instead you’re out of your tree!’
After selling LinkedIn to Microsoft, since 2017 he has served on the tech company’s board of directors. Read NLPC’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, arguing why Hoffman is unfit for the role.
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