It’s a mistake for socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to avoid calling Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro a dictator, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) indicated.

“He’s a corrupt dictator,” Menendez said on CNN. “He has a combination of an absolute dictatorship and a narco traffic state.”

“He keeps the generals around him in line by a combination of making them part of that narco-trafficking and the monies that proceed from it, and at the same time, by Cuban security that he has dividing the generals one against the other so they went think about creating a coup.”

“So, there is no question he’s corrupt,” he added.

CNN host John Berman then asked Menendez if it was a mistake for Sanders to to not call Maduro a dictator while speaking at a town hall.

“Absolutely,” he answered. “Dictatorship is dictatorship — whether from the right or left.”

“Dictatorship oppresses their people.”

“I’m really surprised that Senator Sanders could not at least call him a dictator,” he added.

Last week, footage of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calling food lines a “good thing” resurfaced after he announced his run for president in 2020.

The footage, which apparently takes place in the 1980s, shows Sanders answering a question about bread lines in Nicaragua due to the food shortages triggered by a local socialist party called Sandinistas.

“You know, it’s funny. Sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is when people are lining up for food,” he said. “That’s a good thing.”

“In other countries, people don’t line up for food. The rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”



Jesse Lee Peterson joins Harrison Smith to poke fun at the delusions of grandeur surrounding the Bernie Sanders campaign for President in 2020.

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