Last Year, Biden Ejected A Gold Star Dad From SOTU. This Year, Trump Announced Capture Of His Son’s Killer
What a difference a year makes. During former President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address, the distraught father of a slain Marine was removed from the room and arrested for interrupting Biden’s speech.
Steve Nikoui, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, shouted “Abbey Gate,” and “Second Battalion First Marines!” His son, 20, was one of 13 Americans killed by an ISIS suicide bomber during Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. There was no tolerance for a grieving father. Nikoui was handcuffed and charged for disrupting Congress. The charges were later dropped.
Before President Donald Trump addressed the joint meeting of Congress Tuesday night, he contacted the 13 Gold Star families who lost a loved one at the Kabul Airport bombing and gave them a measure of closure, telling them the U.S. Government worked with the Government of Pakistan and arrested Mohammad Sharifullah, the suspected mastermind behind the bombing.
During his speech, Trump announced Sharifullah was on his way to the U.S. “to face the swift sword of American justice.”
“I spoke to many of the parents and loved ones, and they were all in our hearts tonight. Just spoke to them on the phone. We had a big call. Every one of them called, and everybody was on the line, and they did nothing but cry with happiness,” Trump said in his speech. “They were very happy, as happy as you can be under those circumstances. Their child, brother, sister, son, daughter was killed for no reason whatsoever in the Middle East.”
When clumsy Biden tried to express empathy to parents who lost a child, he made it about himself and spoke of his sorrow in losing his son, Beau Biden, to brain cancer. But Biden was fake. If he cared about anyone’s grief but his own, he would never have allowed Nikoui to be charged. He could have spoken to him from the podium and taken some accountability for his son’s death. Of course, Biden was not sharp enough to think on his feet by then. Even if he had all his marbles, compassion for others was not his strong suit, and it’s hard to know what to say to someone processing a death.
Responding to tragedy is an expected and difficult task for the president. Biden blew it. Trump has mastered it.
As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, Gold Star families connected to the Afghanistan withdrawal felt let down by the Biden administration both in how Biden put their loved ones in harm’s way and the way he delt with them personally.
Trump responds to grief differently. He focuses on the person in pain, not himself. He has a masterful way of communicating the tragedy of their grief. And he doesn’t have one obligatory conversation and move on; Trump develops relationships with the families of victims and speaks their names often. He mentioned several loved ones in Tuesday’s speech, making heartfelt remarks to the family of Laken Riley, who was killed by an illegal alien, and the widow of New York Police Officer Jonathan Diller, who was shot and killed while on duty.
Trump remembered Corey Comperatore, who was fatally shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, in an attempted assassination on Trump.
“When the sound of gunshots pierced the air, it was a horrible sound. Corey knew instantly what it was and what to do. He threw himself on top of his wife and daughters and shielded them from the bullets with his own body. Corey was hit really hard. You know, the story from there, he sacrificed his life to save theirs,” Trump said.
“To Helen, Allison and Kaylee, Corey is looking down on his three beautiful ladies right now, and he is cheering you on. He loves you … Corey was taken from us much too soon, but his destiny was to leave us all with a shining example of the selfless devotion of a true American patriot. It was love like Corey’s that built our country. It’s love like Corey’s that is going to make our country more majestic than ever before. I believe that my life was saved that day in Butler for a very good reason. I was saved by God to make America great again. I believe that.”
Because he is able to capture authentic emotion, Trump validates the experiences of people in pain. When he tells their stories, the families of victims are able to share their grief, and know their loved one is not forgotten, their life was not wasted, their death matters.
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