The heckler who shouted at President Biden during his State of the Union address Thursday night was identified as the
father of a fallen Marine — and was later arrested over the disruption.
"America's safer today than when I took office," Biden, 81, was in the middle of saying before he was interrupted from the chamber's balcony.
"
Abbey Gate!" Steve Nikoui yelled down at the president. "Second Battalion, First Marines!"
Capitol Police escorted Nikoui, 51, out of the chamber around 10:15 p.m. and took him into custody.
He was charged with crowding, obstructing, or incommoding Congress, a misdemeanor that typically results in the offender's release after paying a $50 fine.
Nikoui's son,
Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, was killed by a suicide bomber outside Kabul's international airport while trying to process evacuees from the Biden administration's botched Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021.
Twelve other US service members were also killed in the blast.
Two other Gold Star fathers told The Post in an interview before Biden's speech that the president should expect harsh words over the catastrophe.
"There's been other people that have confirmed that information that Biden knew — damn good and well — that Afghanistan was going to fall," said Mark Schmitz, the father of Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, calling the withdrawal "a totally epic screw-up."
"I suspect tonight, there's gonna be a lot of heckling," he added.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Post he has offered private meetings with several Gold Star families to the White House but been rebuffed.
Public polling shows Biden's approval rating dipped underwater beginning in August 2021 — and has never returned to net positive.
Two federal reports have
since faulted the administration for its "abrupt and uncoordinated" pullout, which
gave locals the impression the US "was simply handing Afghanistan over to a Taliban government-in-waiting."
For Gold Star families, however, the reports disappointingly failed to assign responsibility for the deaths of their loved ones.
"It's despicable. I'm not holding my breath at all that we're gonna get [it]," Schmitz said.
"He didn't care. And he left all the munitions behind at Bagram [Airfield]," he added, referring to $7 billion worth of US military equipment that was still in Afghanistan when the Taliban took it over.
"They have every right to say, 'Where is that explanation?'" Issa said of the Gold Star families. "'Where is that apology? Where is the legitimate investigation so it doesn't happen to somebody else's family?'
"That's why we're honored to have them here. It's why we want them in the audience," he added, expressing hope that "by some miracle, [Biden] says something that they feel at least meets them halfway."
The president did not refer to the Afghanistan pullout at any point during his 68-minute speech.
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