GOP senator cites Soviet 'Iron Curtain' to defend Trump's border wall

United States Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) recently told a roomful of constituents that he wants former President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico to be completed because other historical barriers prevented people from crossing between neighboring nations.

"When you have an open border, you don't really have a country because sovereignty is connected with who can come to America or not come to America, just like any other country," said Grassley – who at the age of eighty-nine was born closer to the 1861 start of Abraham Lincoln's presidency than Joe Biden's in 2020 – is seeking an eighth consecutive Senate term. If the GOP retakes the Senate majority in the midterm elections next Tuesday, Grassley as pro tempore would be third in the presidential line of succession.

Grassley cited two examples to make his point.

"When people say walls don’t work, ask the people that put up the Iron Curtain seventy years ago," he said, referring to the division between Western Europe and the communist Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall that split Germany was dismantled in 1989 when the USSR collapsed.

"Ask the people in Israel that put up a wall between parts of Jerusalem and where the Palestinians live, et cetera et cetera," Grassley continued, alluding to the Western or Wailing Wall, which was built in 19 BCE by King Herod the Great and destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

"So," Grassley added, "I think finishing the wall is very important."