Europe

Berlin mayor to Trump: ‘Don’t build this wall’

by Mark Hensch - 01/27/17 2:14 PM ET

Berlin’s mayor says President Trump should scrap his plan for a wall along America’s border with Mexico.

“[Our city] cannot look on without comment when a country plans to build a new wall,” Michael Mueller said in a statement Friday that referenced the Cold War-era Berlin Wall, according to Agence France-Presse.

“We Berliners know best how much suffering was caused by the division of an entire continent with barbed wire and concrete,” he added. “[Do] not go down this wrong path of isolation and exclusion.”

Between 1961 and 1989, the Berlin Wall divided East Germany’s portion of Berlin from West Germany’s side of the city, preventing East Germans from fleeing the Soviet bloc.

{mosads}“We can’t just accept it if our historical experience is disregarded by those to whom we largely owe our freedom, the Americans,” Mueller said. “Dear Mr. President, don’t build this wall.”

Mueller’s remarks echo former President Reagan’s famous challenge to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.

Reagan urged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” a challenge that was ultimately fulfilled when East Germany allowed travel to the West in 1989.

Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing federal agencies to begin constructing a wall on the border with Mexico.

The president campaigned on pledges to building the wall last year, arguing it would reduce illegal immigration and drug trafficking into the homeland.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said Thursday that he was canceling a planned meeting with Trump after Trump ordered the wall’s construction to build a wall separating their nations. Trump later claimed that calling off the meeting was a mutual decision.

Trump has repeatedly pledged that Mexico will reimburse the U.S. for the wall’s construction, a promise Peña Nieto rejects.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday suggested a 20 percent tariff could be imposed on Mexican products to help force Mexico into footing the bill. Later that day, though, Spicer walked back the proposal.