[REUTERS] Venezuela's embattled president, Nicolas Maduro, said on Tuesday night he supported Bernie Sanders...The only openly Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Sanders was Representative-for-Life from Vermont until moving to the Senate for the rest of his life in 2006, assuming the seat vacated by Jim Jeffords...
in the U.S. presidential race, adding that the candidate, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, would win if the vote were "free."
Maduro, a socialist who sees himself as the political heir to his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, has long railed against the United States, blaming it for Venezuela's economic crisis and accusing Washington of attempting to topple him.
"Bernie Sanders, our revolutionary friend, ought to win in the United States," Maduro said during an hours-long televised broadcast.
"If the elections were free ... Bernie Sanders would be president of the United States," he said, criticizing the U.S. Electoral College system as unrepresentative of popular sentiment.