A former Democratic Presidential candidate has spoken out in defense of the Gold Star dad who interrupted the State of the Union address with a furious outburst directed at Joe Biden. Steve Nikoui, 51, is the father of a U.S. Marine who was killed in the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 13 Marines at the Abbey Gate entrance to Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, by a suicide bomber.
The attack took the life of Nikoi’s son, Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui. The Gold Star dad was in attendance as a guest of Florida Representative Brian Mast. As Biden was rambling about his plan to keep Americans safe, the grieving dad stood and shouted, “Remember Abbey Gate,” before being escorted out by the Sergeant at Arms and detained by Capital police.
Shortly after the arrest, Mast took to X and said: “The Sergeant at Arms is holding my State of the Union guest for yelling at @POTUS in protest because his son was killed in action at the Abbey Gate due to Biden’s incompetence. So much for the right to petition our government for the redress of grievances.” It was a tense and emotional scene, and some think the charges against the Gold Star dad should be dropped.
Capitol Police said he was arrested on charges of crowding, obstructing, or incommoding. This led to a most unusual Representative to speak out in defense of Nikoui. Former Democratic Presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., came out in defense of the dad, saying on social media, “As a Gold Star Son myself, I can only imagine the pain he has felt since losing his son in Afghanistan.”
Phillips did manage to get a shot in at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. when he continued, “No one should interrupt a State of the Union Address, but if Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t arrested for her outbursts, why should he?” Despite the jab at the firebrand Greene, Phillips is correct in alluding to the optics behind the arrest of a grieving dad and the absence of consequences from MTG.
Earlier in the evening, Greene, wearing a red MAGA hat, a red jacket adorned with buttons featuring the name of slain Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, and a t-shirt reading “Say Her Name” in reference to Riley, stood up and implored Biden to ‘say her name.’
In one of the rare forays off-script for Biden, he called Laken Riley “Lincoln Riley,” who is the head coach of USC football, and said, “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal.” Since illegal is now considered politically incorrect, if not technically accurate, Biden has been roasted by his own party in the days since and even went on television to correct his choice of words. It was just another example of how the left eats its own when one runs afoul of the approved narrative.
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