Ryan PULLIAM

Jesus Follower, Co-Creator of Reid Parker, Runnin’ Rebel Basketball, UNLV Football, ΣΧ fraternity. I saved Latin...what did you ever do?

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@drgurner I have taken away so many incredible things from Tom Ferry, but I think the most impactful was his suggestion to follow you.

[DocumentingLibs @HistorianUSA1]

A doorbell camera captures two Soldiers—one a battle-hardened Sergeant Major, the other an officer—standing at a family’s door in full dress uniform. They wait with quiet dignity, heads up, eyes steady. The weight of what they’re there to do is written on their faces.

They’re not delivering good news.

As we approach Memorial Day, it’s easy to post flags and barbecues. But this is the real cost. Since our nation’s founding, as many as 1.4 million American service members have made the ultimate sacrifice—fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters—who never came home.

Every Gold Star family knows that knock. Every folded flag, every name on a wall, every empty seat at the table carries a story of love, duty, and unbearable loss.

Tonight I’m praying for every family who’s ever answered that door. For every name we must never forget. And for the brave men and women in uniform who still carry the hardest mission of all: telling a family their hero is gone.

We owe them everything.

Freedom isn’t free. It’s given by the blood of patriotic heroes.

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@KJP Taking the family to Cape Cod in late July and am hoping to take a day trip to Newport. Been a supporter of yours for a long time!!

[Sigma Chi Fraternity @SigmaChi]

Our dynasty continues to grow this fall! Our official expansion schedule release just dropped, and we're just getting started… What school we should add next ⬇️

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@AT_AdamThurgood I had no clue! I’m glad she is ok.

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@LPDonovan Really!? Oh man! Took my son there a few weeks back and had the cherry cheesecake and then went back the next day for another one. I thought it was fantastic!

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@AT_AdamThurgood Oh well this presupposes there is any reasoning behind any of this.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@Matt_Pinner 67

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@JohnLeFevre Megos in Lebanon?

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@ToddVGK One of a kind. Thank you for everything you’ve done and especially for being you.

[CJ Besser @cj_besser]

#AGTG HOME🎰 @unlvfootball

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@SouthwestAir I am wanting to use my A List eligible upgrade for seats on a flight tomorrow, but I’m curious if my companion will be allowed to upgrade at no cost as well?

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

I’ve only left a #UNLVBB game early twice; once my wife had tickets to Madonna & the second time was last night v UNM. I was far less embarrassed to leave to see a 70 year old woman sing “Like a Virgin” than whatever that was last night. @CoachJPastner wants more fans? Be better

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@GoodmanJason Hahaha good to be here

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

Joining Sigma Chi was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I’m overjoyed that other men at UNLV will now have that opportunity. Please let me know if you have any potential recruits!

[Sigma Chi Fraternity @SigmaChi]

Sigma Chi International Fraternity is excited to announce we're expanding to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas! Do you know of an incoming or current student who would be a good fit? Direct message us his contact information or tag him below ⬇️

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

Wow, what a powerful statement about life and how to live it, regardless of circumstance.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Ryan PULLIAM @RNPulliam]

@JHalberstadt7 I would love to go to South Bend again. Amazing trip.

[Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner]

Truth of the day:
"People who are good at making excuses, are never very good at making money."

Excuses & Success are incompatible.

[Vegas Varsity @vegasvarsity]

Every new Rebel coach has said they want to bring back the Runnin’ Rebel style and Pastner is the first to actually try to do it and I’m here for it. Consistently hitting 90 without 4 main contributors and love the grit. Can’t help but be optimistic.