It’s not everyday that a presidential candidate (and leading frontrunner), from a major American political party, defends a repressive regime, that most historians estimate “conservatively” executed 5,000 political prisoners within the first dozen years under the rule of Fidel Castro.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what self-prefaced Democratic/Socialist Bernie Sanders appearing on “60 Minutes” gushed Sunday, praising the murderous dictator’s social welfare programs, describing them as “redeeming,” despite the untold atrocities committed.

That stunning comment by the 78-year old avowed socialist even caught progressive host Anderson Cooper by surprise.

However Bernie was just getting warmed up exclaiming, “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing…even though Fidel Castro did it?”

Bernie’s positive portrayal and rewriting of history regarding the repressive doctrine fostered by Castro’s Cuban Revolution, stands in stark contrast to political science professor Dr. Rudolph J. Rummel, who has written countless papers on the subject.

It’s noteworthy to point out that after Cuban President/Dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown, Castro at first promised to institute a Democratic form of government, even refusing to describe his new government at first as a “socialist” or “communist” regime, however that quickly changed, and soon Castro aliened himself with Moscow, quickly becoming a satellite state of the Soviet Union, only 90 miles away from America’s shore.

Moreover according to Rummel, the actual estimated number of political executions under the Castro Regime between 1958 though 1987 may have ranged between 15,000 to 33,000, killed, many simply vanished never more to be seen.

Bernie of course isn’t interested in such mundane things as history; he would rather sell his young ill-informed and naive supporters, on a system of government that has never worked, except to exploit and murder those unfortunate enough to live under its rule.

As for Bernie’s absurd remark regarding Castro’s much touted “literacy programs,” Republican Senator Ted Cruz (who’s dad fled Cuba), hammered the Vermont Senator, tweeting out on social media, “It really makes a difference when those you murder at the firing squad can read & write,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Moreover, Bernie’s support of the murderous dictator goes back to 1986, in a just uncovered video of the Democratic Presidential frontrunner giving a speech at the University of Vermont, praising the Castro regimes socialist policies, while criticizing the United States’ bipartisan efforts to curtail the spread of socialism around the world.

However because of the growing backlash by moderate Democrats worrying that Sanders stands a good chance of being the Democratic presidential nominee heading into 2020, Sanders seems to have changed his strips a bit in a new interview “condemning” any human rights violations under the Castro Regime, while also attempting to draw the President into his sphere, by accusing the President of being to friendly with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“I do not think that Kim Jong Un is a good friend,” Sanders said. “I don’t trade love letters with a murdering dictator. Vladimir Putin, not a great friend of mine.”

Make no mistake, Sanders is a true believer in the Fidel Castro model of socialism, (without the firing squads), in redistributing America’s wealth, taxing average working men and woman in support of illegal aliens, and dismantling the private healthcare of over 160 million Americans and replacing it with a single payer government program, similar to the one that almost bankrupted Bernie’s own state of Vermont.