Chuck Grassley cites the Iron Curtain as why Donald Trump's border wall should be completed

This article has been updated for accuracy and clarity regarding Grassley's remarks.

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.

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"When people say walls don’t work, ask the people that put up the Iron Curtain seventy years ago," he said, referring to the non-physical division between Western Europe and the communist Soviet Union's dominion over Eastern Europe. The USSR collapsed in 1991.

"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 barrier that Israel erected in the West Bank in 1967.

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

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