Who are two of the world's despots rooting for this election?

Clinton takes on Trump in foreign policy speech

Outsider candidates in the race for the presidency who were once considered long-shots are beginning to receive some political backing from some of the less-savory actors on the world's stage.

It's easy to see why Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are staying relatively silent on two of the informal, international endorsements they've picked up lately.

During a televised speech on Tuesday night, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a socialist, called Bernie Sanders, also a socialist, a "revolutionary friend" and said he would clinch the Democratic nomination if the U.S. election system were fair.

"If the elections were free ... Bernie Sanders would be president of the United States," he said.

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Maduro's comments echo a familiar cry from many staunch Sanders supporters who complain of an "unfair" or "rigged" Democratic primary because of the party's influence of superdelegates, who make up 15 percent of the total amount of delegates.

The Venezuelan president's control over the oil-rich nation has proved to be catastrophic. Maduro took over the presidency in 2013 after Hugo Chavez's death, and since then, the country has fallen into an economic depression. Opponents are petitioning to hold a recall vote against him over the country's collapse.

The Clinton campaign at one point tried linking Sanders' socialist beliefs to the notorious Chavez regime in September, and Sanders responded by calling the late Chavez "a dead Communist dictator."

On the other side of the globe, North Korea's secluded despot, Kim Jong-un, endorsed presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, for president earlier this week.

The endorsement adds to a growing list of questionable Trump backers like Russian President Vladimir Putin and white nationalist David Duke, among others.

In a Tuesday editorial from the country's state-run news website "DPRK Today," Kim Jong Un called the Republican presidential nominee a "wise politician" and the right choice in November for American voters.

The article also quoted Kim blasting several of her foreign policy decisions to deter nuclear growth in the North, and referring to her as "thick-headed Hillary."

Trump's own views on North Korea are mixed. Trump has vowed to halt Pyongyang's nuclear program by leveraging China's influence over the isolated state.

But he has also talked about potentially withdrawing nearly 30,000 U.S. forces from Seoul, an idea that has drawn praise in the North Korean-run media.

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