Ryan Holiday just wants to be mad at Ivanka Trump

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]living in a way that's inconsistent and not aligned with what feels right, what models the right thing for my children, what feels inherently true to me, it's too expensive. I mean, look, here's the thing. She's totally right. That's exactly what Marcus Aurelius said.

[00:00:15]That's exactly what stoicism is about.

[00:00:18]She's just not living or acting in accordance with it in any way. If you did, you'd have an intervention with your dad whose life would be tied with his horrible negative mean bullying thoughts all the time. So, you think Holiday would be pleased that at least she's accurately reflecting the teachings of Aurelius and holding that ideal up for others if nothing else and we should assume, by the way, trying to live up to them herself. Isn't that praiseworthy, commendable? No, it's not because she is Ivanka Trump and that last name is the problem. And because of that last name, she is responsible for the acts of others in the family including her father. And Holiday says that she should stage an intervention and that's the only way she would live up to the stoic ideal. This is ridiculous on a couple levels. Get into some more of them in a minute, but first of all, maybe she's thought about having intervention with her father and has thought it wouldn't work or be counterproductive or it might damage this key relationship in her life. How does Holiday know? How does Holiday know what she's thinking? Has he talked to her about it? No, he probably wouldn't even deign to speak to her. Maybe she's had an intervention for all we know and it hasn't worked on Holiday's in producing the results that Holiday would like to see. By the way, she was very involved in the first term and then pretty much after the 2020 election controversy, took a step back. So, maybe there's something going on there. Again, Holiday doesn't know and the key thing is he doesn't care.