Gold Star Dad Who Interrupted State Of The Union Explains Why He Did It
Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
President Joe Biden had been talking for about an hour when Steven Nikoui began feeling like he was sitting in the Colosseum in the movie “Gladiator” rather than at a State of the Union address.
“They’re all sitting in the stands and they’re looking at the beast down there and they’re getting amused. And I felt that. I rationalized it like that and I was a little sickened,” Mr. Nikoui said.
“These people … they wouldn’t even have any of this if it wasn’t for someone like my kid or … any of the others.”
He had hoped this would be the day that President Biden would say his son’s name, Kareem.
But when the president said “America is safer today than when I took office,” the Gold Star father reached a breaking point.
Mr. Nikoui likens the moment as “having an out of the body experience.”
The anger and grief that had been stewing inside him for three years let loose.
“Remember Abbey Gate! United States Marines! Kareem Mae'Lee Nikoui!”
He shouted his son’s name, U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, and the name of the airport gate in Kabul where a suicide bomber killed his son and 12 other U.S. Marines on Aug 26, 2021, during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Then, he was arrested.
Mr. Nikoui, who had been invited to the State of the Union by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), a veteran, was escorted out of the House Gallery.
“I did have remorse,” he told The Epoch Times. “I felt ashamed.”
Mr. Nikoui said he was placed in handcuffs and escorted to a police substation at the Capitol. There, his mugshot was taken and he was fingerprinted. He said he waived his Miranda Rights.
The officers who arrested him “were pretty good,” he said, but they gave him an ultimatum: “If you talk to us, you‘ll be out in an hour. If you don’t talk to us, you’ll go to the DC jail and see the judge in the morning.”
He said he was scared to go to jail. He'd never been arrested before.
‘He Would Have Been Proud’
Mr. Nikoui said Kareem, meaning “generous and honorable” in Arabic, is a fitting name for his son.
It’s exactly how his son, a proud American patriot, lived and died, he said. Something, he added, that President Biden has never once acknowledged.
He said Kareem made the ultimate sacrifice for the country he had longed to serve since he was four years old.
As a little boy, Kareem had a collection of “little army guys” he constantly played with, Mr. Nikoui recalled. His son joined Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as soon as he was old enough and he loved military movies. His favorite was “Band of Brothers,” a TV mini series.
Kareem’s commitment to serve was not a rite of passage as it so often is between father and son, Mr Nikoui said.
“I was against it,” he said. “I knew this would happen. I buried my head in the sand. I didn’t know anything about the military. I told him I don’t want to know anything about this. Just get out. But he didn’t want to get out. He said ‘I’m going all the way.’”
Mr. Nikoui, a born-again Christian, talked to The Epoch Times about his son and his March 7 arrest at the State of the Union.
He also reflected on his relentless blame on President Biden for not following the Doha Agreement established under the Trump Administration. And his ardent belief that his son, who was only 20 when he was killed, would still be alive if former President Donald Trump had been commander-in-chief when his son was deployed in Afghanistan.
“The only reason why I was even all right with my kid joining the military—because, like I told you I was against it—was because Donald Trump was the president,” he said.
The memories flooded back as President Biden touted his tenure.
From the Democrats dressed all in white to signify pro-abortion, to President Biden mispronouncing Laken Riley’s name in response to Rep. Marjorie Greene’s (R-Ga.) demand he say the name of the Georgia student brutally slain by an illegal immigrant, Mr. Nikoui described the many reasons that made him think “harder than ever” about the sacrifice of his son and the other fallen soldiers.
He thought back to the horrifying videos Kareem had sent him during his deployment—of young Afghani children begging the soldiers to take them to America.
“I saw this little girl just screaming, pushing herself up against the fence—screaming, ’they'll kill me, take me with you, the bad guys are coming,” he recalled. And mothers, “throwing their babies at razor wire. And women running into the razor wire because they don’t want to be raped and killed by the Taliban.”
He said Kareem, also a Christian, often spoke emotionally of how deeply pained he was by what he witnessed.
Mr. Nikoui believes President Biden and his followers lack any understanding of that kind of pain. He said he finds it appalling that anytime someone dies or loses a loved one, the president interminably turns it into his own grief about the loss of his son Beau to cancer.
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