Chuck Grassley Defends Trump's Border Wall With Iron Curtain Reference

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is calling for the completion of former President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico, pointing to the effectiveness of the Iron Curtain in preventing residents of Soviet-aligned countries from fleeing their Communist regimes.

The long-serving Iowa senator made the remarks in a video posted to Twitter Thursday by PatriotTakes, which describes itself as a group of researchers seeking to expose right-wing extremism. Grassley, who is running for his eighth term, reiterated his support for one of the most defining and divisive ambitions of Trump's presidency. But he also invoked another border wall that Cold War-era U.S. presidents wanted taken down.

Trump and other Republicans have argued that a wall along the U.S. southern border is necessary to control the flow of immigrants while preventing drugs and gangs from entering the country.

"When you have an open border, you don't really have a country because sovereignty is connected with saying who can come to America or not come to America, just like any other country," Grassley said in the video. "And when people say, 'Walls don't work,' ask the people that put up the Iron Curtain 70 years ago."

The Iron Curtain was the political and economic boundary separating Europe into eastern countries in the Soviet Union's sphere of influence and those aligned with Western countries and the NATO alliance. That boundary included a sprawling network of physical barriers that included fences, walls, minefields and watchtowers designed to prevent eastern Europeans from fleeing.

The Berlin Wall, which divided the eastern and western portions of the German city, was also part of that boundary. The wall became a symbol of the divide between the democratic West and the Communist East, and President John F. Kennedy denounced it in a 1963 speech.

Janice Weiner, Democratic candidate for Iowa's Legislature, reacted to Grassley's remarks on Twitter, saying, "this is the argument the East German communists used to make."

"I was there when the Berlin Wall fell - people hate walls. They want to break down barriers. Remember Reagan? Tear down that wall, Mr Gorbachev?"

Weiner was referring to how President Ronald Reagan called for the wall's removal in a 1987 speech in West Berlin, denouncing it as a "scar" and "an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state."

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Reagan famously demanded in the speech, calling out Mikhail Gorbachev, then leader of the Soviet Union.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 in what's seen as a key moment in the collapse of the Soviet Union and lifting of the Iron Curtain.

Chris Vickery, digital security researcher, pointed out on Twitter that there are now monuments "to remind us all how horrible the Iron Curtain was."

"Monuments to remind the future that this is not a solution," he said. "It is an abomination and should never have happened."

Newsweek has reached out to Grassley's office for comment.