“Dictatorship is dictatorship whether from the right or left,” Bob Menendez, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee's top Democrat, said. | Mark Carlson/AP Photo Congress Bob Menendez 'surprised' by Bernie Sanders' soft Maduro stance

Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Menendez on Tuesday criticized Sen. Bernie Sanders for his refusal to label socialist Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro a dictator, telling CNN that he was "surprised" that the Democratic presidential candidate has declined to do so.

In a CNN town hall Monday night, Sanders (I-Vt.) was pressed on his break with the Democratic Party and a majority of other politicians by declining to support Maduro’s ouster. Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist, has refused to affix the dictator label to Maduro, who has overseen Venezuela's decline into political, economic and humanitarian crises.


On Tuesday, Menendez (D-N.J.) took issue with Sanders' unwillingness to characterize Maduro as a dictator.

“Dictatorship is dictatorship whether from the right or left,” the foreign relations committee's top Democrat said on CNN’s “New Day.” “Dictatorship oppresses their people. I'm really surprised that Sen. Sanders could not at least call him a dictator.”

Menendez said Sanders’ resistance to doing so was a mistake.

Sanders' congressional office dismissed Menendez's criticism in a statement Tuesday.

“This whole question of 'why won’t you condemn Dictator X?' is a game that Washington hawks play to reaffirm the interventionist status quo, and Bernie won't play it," Sanders foreign affairs adviser Matt Duss said. "Bernie has always been clear about the values that inform his approach, whether it's domestic or foreign policy: human rights, equality, dignity, and security. He supports an approach to Venezuela based on those values."

On Monday, Sanders defended himself from heavy criticism on all sides when it comes to Maduro, saying he is opposed to any U.S. military intervention to displace a leader, citing “unintended consequences when a powerful nation goes in and tells people who their government will be.”

Still, Sanders acknowledged that the situation in Venezuela, where the U.S. and dozens of other countries have recognized Venezuelan National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó as the nation’s interim president, is terrible.

He denounced Maduro’s blockade of humanitarian aid at the country’s border and acknowledged that the last presidential election there was “not a free and fair election.” But he said "there are still democratic operations taking place in their country" and called instead for a new internationally supervised election.

Asked by moderator Wolf Blitzer why he stops short of calling Maduro a dictator, Sanders demurred and turned his fire on President Donald Trump, accusing him of being inconsistently “selective as to where he is concerned about democracy”

“My record is to be concerned about democracy all over the world,” he said. “We've got to do everything we can, but at the end of the day, it's going to be the people of Venezuela who determine the future of their country, not the United States of America.”