Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Sunday struggled to explain why he voted for President Obama's nominee to lead the CIA, but opposes President Trump's nominee, even though both were in the CIA when it ran controversial enhanced interrogation techniques that many call torture.

Sanders voted for Obama's nominee, John Brennan, but said he would oppose Trump's nominee, Gina Haspel. But Sanders dodged when asked why he could support one and not the other.

"On this one, I would agree with John McCain, and tell you that I think ... and tell you what our leaders in the armed forces [think]," he said on CNN. "If the United States condones torture ... for other people, then that subjects our own men and women who are captured to be tortured as well."

"I think Brennan did a good job in his position," he said. "I have serious reservations about this nominee, and I will oppose her."

But when pressed again on why he waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques is a dealbreaker for Haspel when it wasn't for Brennan, Sanders said the policies of the Trump administration are also a factor.

"It's not just the issue of torture," he said. "It goes, I think, deeper than that, and that is the foreign policy that we have seen from Mr. Trump."