Steve Nikoui, the Gold Star father arrested Thursday night for disrupting President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, tells The Daily Wire his only goal was to get Biden to acknowledge his son and 12 other service members who were killed during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Nikoui said he struggled with the decision over whether or not to even attend the speech as a guest of Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), who had invited him because Nikoui’s son, U.S. Marine Kareem Nikoui, was one of thirteen troops killed when a terrorist set off a bomb at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.
“It was an awkward dynamic,” he says of his attendance at the speech. “I wanted to go, but I also didn’t want to go. And when I was there, seeing the theatrics, the circus … it just got to me.”