Jim Lein, Minot

President Trump wants to take Pentagon funds to “build the wall” on our southern border.

And lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are resisting this.

Yet Trump seems obsessed with this wall. He wants it no matter what.

His repetitious and self-centered remarks about a wall bring to mind another very different Republican President and another wall: Reagan and the Berlin Wall.

Whether you liked Reagan or not you had to admit that there was a presidential speech, one for the history books, especially those six words: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Others such as Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa were involved in persuading Gorbachev and the USSR to take down the wall and dissolve itself, yet Reagan spoke those words.

And he didn’t divide the country with inflammatory rhetoric. He didn’t strut and rabble rouse. He talked regularly with Democrats, especially House Leader Tip O’Neill, with whom sometimes he had a drink or two after a long day on opposite sides of an issue.

They were of course on the same side about that wall.