Former Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) is opening up about his battle with terminal Stage 4 cancer.
And he has a powerful message for all the lawmakers he used to work with in D.C.
Sasse, who left the Senate in 2023 after eight years, described his diagnosis as a “death sentence” and argued in a recent interview that both political parties and media ecosystems increasingly rely on amplifying fringe behavior from the opposing side, rather than solving substantive problems.
Sasse told Ross Douthat of The New York Times during the “Interesting Times” podcast, Sasse reflected that politics and media today have shrunk into reactive, tribal spaces.
“There’s a ton of incentive to find some nut job on the left or some nut job on the right,” Sasse said.
“The problem with that kind of nut picking is it doesn’t ever solve a problem.”
Sasse continued by reflecting on his own time in the Senate, acknowledging that his approach, focusing on civic norms and institutional reform, often didn’t work with the incentives of modern politics.
“I wasn’t a very good politician,” he said.
“I am way too idealistic about what I believe in America to be a very good dealmaker.”
Sasse argued that political institutions have failed to keep pace with broader societal changes driven by technology and cultural fragmentation.
“Politics barely matters for what we’re going through right now,” he said.
“This institution is filled with blowhards.”
Sasse’s harsh words for the current state of American politics were part of a larger interview where he also opened up about his cancer battle.
Sasse was diagnosed last year with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, an aggressive disease he’s fighting with an experimental drug that has left his skin bloody and “bubbling.”
“Here’s a hard fact: Ben Sasse’s torso is chock-full of tumors,” Sasse recounted about a doctor telling him after a full-body scan.
In December, doctors told him he had three to four months to live.
Sasse is enrolled in a clinical trial for daraxonrasib, a targeted therapy designed to slow pancreatic cancer by blocking the mutant proteins that drive the disease in most patients.
“I take it orally, but it’s a nasty drug,” he said.
“It causes crazy stuff like my body can’t grow skin and so I bleed all out of a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn’t be bleeding.”
Good news!
I have mites!(“good news” because fairly easily treatable. One of the downsides of aggressive chemo is that it’s tough for facial skin to hold at bay a lotta the stuff we normally fight off. This diagnosis is good news, b/c our docs will be able to help get us back… https://t.co/sdNW7ASm6h
— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) January 21, 2026
Sasse, who represented Nebraska in the Senate from 2015 to 2023, said his skin and face feel “nuclear.”
According to Sasse, a pharmacist was shocked by his appearance and asked if doctors had done something “electrical” to him.
“I don’t even know what that is, but either acid or electric shocks produce a face that looks this hideous,” Sasse said with a laugh.
In January 2023, Sasse left the Senate to become the president of the University of Florida.
He stepped down at the end of July 2024 after his wife, Melissa, was diagnosed with epilepsy.
Shortly thereafter, Sasse sought medical attention after experiencing intense back pain, which he later learned was caused by pancreatic tumors pressing against his spinal column.
According to Sasse, the thought of leaving his wife and children behind is something he weighs every single day, but he said he has found strength in his Christian faith and in the idea of death itself.
“I’ve continued to feel a peace about the fact that death is something that we should hate,” he told the New York Times.
“We should call it a wicked thief. And yet, it’s pretty good that you pass through the veil of tears one time and then there will be no more tears, there will be no more cancer.”