It’s not often that social media posts about terminal cancer or January 6 can evoke any sort of positive emotion, much less one that is truly heartwarming, but former Sen. Ben Sasse (R-OK) managed to do just that on Monday.

President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 tweet urging Vice President Mike Pence to “have the courage” to overturn the Electoral College results was a shocking call to disregard constitutional norms amidst the chaos and violence of that day, but since then, the post’s outlandish language has become long-running online meme about what is needed to accomplish various impossible tasks.

Examples cover a wide range of topics, including political commentary (like Viktor Orbán’s landslide defeat to Péter Magyar in the recent Hungarian elections) to the woes of disappointed sports fans.

Monday evening, Sasse wrote one of the all-time tweets of this genre, judging by the reactions he received.

The 54-year-old represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate from 2015 until 2023, when he left to serve as the president of the University of Florida, a position he held until he stepped down in July 2024, citing his wife Melissa Sasse’s “recent epilepsy diagnosis and a new batch of memory issues.”

Last December, he broke the news that he had Stage IV pancreatic cancer in posts on his Facebook and X accounts, and that it was unfortunately a terminal diagnosis.

Since then, Sasse has granted numerous media interviews, garnering widespread praise for his unfiltered and heartfelt conversations about his faith, love for his family, hopes for our country, and the perspective that his diagnosis has brought him. He has been receiving treatments that have significantly shrunk his tumors and been participating in some clinical trials but the cancer was too widespread and his doctors have said his case is still terminal. Still, Sasse has said he is thankful that the treatments may give him more time with his family as well as helping researchers find better treatments for future pancreatic cancer patients.

Sasse was on Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes, and interviewer Scott Pelley described him as looking “seriously sunburned” from his cancer treatments but “as insightful, passionate, and hopeful as ever.”

Pence was among those who shared clips of Sasse on 60 Minutes, writing that it was “Profoundly Moving” from “Start to Finish,” thanking him for his “Personal Courage and Showing What it Means to Love Your Family and Love God.”

Sasse replied a few minutes later with a tweet that soon gathered an outpouring of praise, writing that he “can still live another 50 years if Mike Pence has the courage.”

CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s reaction — “Honestly Ben has won twitter and we should all just stop even trying” — was a typical response as commenters openly speculated that Sasse may have written the “greatest tweet of all time.”

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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