The Daily Stoic author Ryan Holiday got pretty worked up by what he called Ivanka Trump’s “incredibly cringe” interpretation of Stoicism and argued that if she were a true Stoic like him, she would be doing a better job of reining in her “sh*tty brothers” and President Donald Trump.

Holiday shared his not-so-stoic response to Ivanka Trump in an X post on Thursday. He played a clip of her celebrating the “amazing” meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and philosopher whom Holiday helped bring back into the popular consciousness with his podcast and best-selling book.

“His perspective is amazing, and he once wrote that the soul becomes dyed the color of its thoughts,” Ivanka Trump said about Aurelius. “And I think about that all the time.”

Holiday threw up his hand and made pouty faces like he was disgusted with Trump as the clip played. He then said that while her reading of Aurelius was correct, “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,” he continued, over Trump’s nonstop “horrible, negative, mean. bullying thoughts.”

Holiday then played a montage of Trump that included him skewering reporters for being “stupid,” mocking California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) as “Gavin Newscum,” and calling Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “garbage.” 

He then pointed at the camera and addressed Ivanka Trump directly, saying he had another Aurelius quote for her: “waste no more time talking about what a good person is like, just f*cking be one.”

Holiday continued ranting by saying:

This is just obviously, incredibly cringe. This sort of performative philosophy, [and] te popularity of Stoicism with people who have no idea that this is a philosophy built around an ethical core in which justice is the true north.

I’ll tell you what Stoicism is not: Stoicism is not a way for you not to have to care about the consequences of the things that are happening around you. It’s not a way to turn inward and turn away from other people, from what’s happening in the world, from not having to care.

Holiday kept it going even more, saying Ivanka Trump was “complicit” in her dad’s actions — and that made her quoting Aurelius as “eye roll-y” as it gets.

“Stoicism is not a brand, it’s a practice,” Holiday lectured her further. “And it demands honesty, it demands self-awareness, it demands accountability, it demands doing the right thing, even with it costs you something. Even when it’s painful, even when it would mean, I don’t know, confronting your horrible family members.”

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