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Former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had a warm and engaging speaking event Thursday in Dallas, Texas, at a program for the Presidential Leadership Scholars. Clintons answer to one question sounded suspiciously to commentators on Fox News like a critique of a recent presidential candidate.

Moderator David Rubenstein asked what the most important quality someone would need who is aspiring to be a president. After Bushs very brief but insightful answer, Clinton responded.

I also think you have to begin with the end in mind, Clinton said. You have to say, yeah, you gotta win the election. But why in the heck are you running?

Thats another thing I noticed about him, Clinton said, pointing at Bush. When he ran for governor against Ann Richards, he didnt say Ann Richards is a klutz. He said, I wanna be governor because I wanna do one, two, three things. Couple of em I didnt agree with. But he had an agenda.

If you want to be president, he continued, realize, its about the people, not about you.

Howard Kurtz on Fox News said the former president gave himself enough space to deny the similarities to criticisms of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, but explained why some thought it was a jab at her lack of political skill.

Its obvious to the rest of us what hes talking about, Kurtz said, and look, Hillary Clinton had a campaign where she had a whole laundry list of liberal positions but no theme, no emotional connection to voters, and not much more beyond Donald Trump is awful, and thats what the former president was artfully saying.

Kurtz continued, explaining that Hillary Clinton failed to campaign with certain kinds of voters where she didnt go as well, Martha.

So Clinton, the former president, that is, he added, argued internally during the 2016 campaign, his wife needed to do more of that. He did some of it himself, he went to places like Lansing, Michigan, the final week of the campaign.

The quote from the former president continued after the Fox News video, and many saw instead a pointed critique of President Donald Trump.

And when its over, Clinton said, and thats what a lot of these people who are real arrogant in office, they forget, and it passes more quickly than you know. You wanna be able to say people are better off when I quit, kids have a better future, things were coming together, you dont wanna say, God, look at all the people I beat!

Even during the 2016 presidential campaign many supporters of Hillary Clinton would compare her to her husband, saying that she just didnt have the political skill he had to engage every individual voter. There were reports that her campaign was trying to keep the former president from upstaging her at events.

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Fox News: Bill Clinton gave a stinging criticism of Hillary's failed campaign - TheBlaze.com

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In this file photo, Hillary Clinton delivers the commencement address to Medgar Evers College graduates.

I told you so.

The four most satisfying words in the English language if youre the one saying them, and the most annoying four words if youre on the receiving end of them.

Except perhaps if youre from the Hillary Clinton campaign, in which case I cant imagine saying I told you so to the media and ultimately to the American public would be all that satisfying.

READ MORE: Trump lawyer says Donald Trump Jr.s Russia email chain did not break the law

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported the incredible revelation that after nearly a full year of denying any contact with anyone from Russia, the Trump campaign had indeed met formally with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin, under the presumption that they would receive damaging information on Clinton. All three Trump campaign operatives, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, were aware before the meeting that it was with someone who was described in writing to them as a Russian government attorney with dirt on the former Secretary of State as part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump.

READ MORE: Donald Trump Jr. tried to get damaging info about Hillary Clinton from Russian lawyer

The talking points from the Trump administration and the blind Republican partisans immediately shifted from we never had any contact with the Russians to so what we met with the Russians? The shift was as staggering as it was surreal.

Then on Friday the Associated Press further added to the holes in the already incredibly porous account of the meeting as it confirmed that another person, Rinat Akhmetshin, had attended. As noted by the Associated Press, Akhmetshin has been reported to have ties to Russian intelligence agencies, though he denies ever working as an intelligence agent. He told the AP that he served in the Soviet military in a unit that was part of counterintelligence but was never formally trained as a spy.

READ MORE: Ex-Soviet counter intelligence agent at meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Russian lawyer

As much as I would like to categorize this information as incredibly astounding, the reality is that we have been warned about the possibility of Russian influence in the election from the Clinton campaign as far back as last July. In the run-up to the Democratic convention, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN that the leak of the stolen DNC emails was a clear indication that Russia was involved, in an ultimate effort to help Donald Trump.

Mooks claims were not taken seriously, even though we now know at the time Mook made the statement on CNN the FBI had already opened their investigation into potential Russian interference, and into possible ties between Trumps campaign operatives and the Russian government.

Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri recently expressed her frustration in writing, I will never understand why he would send a letter to Congress 11 days before the election to let lawmakers know that the FBI had happened upon more emails which they didnt yet know the contents of that may or may not have been relevant to Clinton, but he did not think the public should know that federal agents were also investigating Trumps campaign.

In the last presidential debate, Clinton herself even cited the unanimous conclusion by the intelligence community, both civilian and military, that Russian meddling in the election had indeed happened. The message was barely received.

According to data from Gallup, voters barely factored in stories about possible Russian meddling as it pertained to Trump, while overwhelmingly associating Clinton with negative media stories pertaining to her emails.

Analysis by Gallup of what people have read, seen or heard in relation to Hillary Clinton.

Analysis by Gallup of what people have read, seen or heard in relation to Donald Trump during the election.

Hillary Clinton ultimately lost the election despite having won the popular vote by nearly three million votes because of 80,000 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It is not outside the realm of plausibility to think that had the media taken the Clinton campaigns warnings more seriously, America would have a competent, qualified president in the White House.

Instead, the president of the United States is a man who has hired his son-in-law with no previous foreign relations or political experience to broker a Middle East peace deal, insults NATO allies, conflates which country he has sent bombs to and constantly embarrasses the office of the president with his Twitter feed.

The Russian government preferred Trump in the election. The Trump campaign knew this and they even had it in writing. You dont have to like Hillary Clinton or think she ran a good campaign to recognize that she was fleeced in the last election. After all, the only consolation she is left with now is being able to say, I told you so.

Supriya Dwivediis host ofThe Morning Show on Torontos Talk Radio AM640and a columnist for Global News.

2017Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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COMMENTARY: Hillary Clinton and her campaign told us so - Globalnews.ca

As the election results rolled in, it became clear that Clinton would not shatter the ceiling that night. The mood grew darker in the Javits Center. The confetti never came.

"Hillary Clinton has been a beacon for me really as a woman," Burson told CNN. "That's really where I thought that this was going, to be the election of all elections to inspire women."

So Burson, an artist based in St. Louis, took what she called an overwhelming emptiness and turned it into something positive. She channeled her emotions into her art.

After the watch party, Burson set off on a mission. She wanted to find the actual confetti that had been loaded into the cannons that night.

So when she needed a new medium to express her reaction this time around, she said the untouched 2016 confetti seemed like a natural progression.

It took about two weeks to track down the real confetti. Burson had knocked on doors and made phone calls for Clinton's campaign, so she started asking around to the other volunteers. One person put her in touch with another until she found the right company in Chicago.

They had 200 pounds of the confetti from the cannons, packaged up in cardboard boxes and plastic bags. The company wrote a letter of verification to ensure it was the real deal.

Burson bought it all.

"And Still I Rise" was chosen as an inspirational title from a focus group of young women, the group that Burson wanted to be motivated by her art.

"I want women and little girls to just don't feel defeated by this," Burson said. "Keep going. Keep fighting."

With the rest of the 200 pounds that isn't in the main snowglobe, she's going to create a series of miniature versions of the exhibit. Smaller "And Still I Rise" globes with the same confetti inside will be sold inside Planned Parenthoods in St. Louis, and all proceeds will go back to the organization.

"I just feel whether it's running for office or breaking their own glass ceiling in some other way, now's a time not to give up," Burson said.

Since the exhibit was installed in May, Burson has received countless responses from women inspired by her work.

"I never dreamed it was going to be this exciting and this exhilarating," she said. "I want that flame to stay alive among women."

Read more:
An artist creates a giant snowglobe with Hillary Clinton's unused election night confetti - CNN International

A Republican operative who reportedly sought to obtain emails from Hillary Clintons private serverfrom people he thought were Russian hackers killed himself in a hotel room in May.

Peter W. Smith, 81, left a file of documents in the Rochester, Minnesota room where he died, including what police described as a suicide note, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Days before his death Smith, gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal about his attempts to obtain the emails and his relationship to former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. Smith denied to theJournalthat he was working with the Trump campaign. But in one recruitment document obtained by the Journal, Smith claimed links to Flynn, along with then-Trump campaign staff Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Sam Clovis.

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Matt Tait, a security researcher who Smith attempted to recruit to his effort, said in a blog that it"was immediately apparent that Smith was both well connected within the top echelons of the campaignand he seemed to know both Lt. Gen. Flynn and his son well." Tait also said that Smith "never expressed to me any discomfort with the possibility that the emails he was seeking were potentially from a Russian front, a likelihood he was happy to acknowledge."

Smith told the Journal thatlast year he put together a team to track down the more than 30,000 emails that may have been stolen from Clintons private server when she was Secretary of State. Clinton has saidshe deleted the emails because they were personal.Smiths team had found five groups of hackers, two of them purportedly Russian, who claimed to have the emails, the report said.

Related: Michael Flynn's grand nuclear scheme

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York, U.S. April 6, 2017. Emails Clinton said she deleted were a focus of some of her opponents during the election campaign. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

It was previously known that Smith had died, but it has only become clear that suicide was the cause thanks to a Minnesota state death record obtainedby the Tribune .

According to the Tribune s report, Smithapologized to authorities in the note and insisted that "NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER" was involved in his death. He wrote that he had decided to kill himself because of a "RECENT BAD TURN IN HEALTH SINCE JANUARY, 2017" and had based his timing partly on "LIFE INSURANCE OF $5 MILLION EXPIRING."

The Republican operative had previously carried out opposition research on other targets including former President Bill Clinton. He was involved in exposing the troopergate scandal in the 1990s, which included allegations of womanizing against the president during his time as Arkansas governor. He also led private equity firms for more than 40 years.

Smith predicted in a blog before his death that "As attention turns to international affairs, as it will shortly, the Russian interference story will die of its own weight."

Read more here:
Hillary Clinton's Emails: Peter Smith, GOP Operative Who Tried to Get Them From Russian Hackers, Killed Himself - Newsweek

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Details Emerge in Suicide of GOP Activist Who Sought Hillary Clinton Emails Wall Street Journal (subscription) WASHINGTONPeter W. Smith, a Republican political activist and financier from Chicago who mounted an effort to obtain former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails from Russian hackers, died on May 14 after asphyxiating himself in a hotel room in ... and more »

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Details Emerge in Suicide of GOP Activist Who Sought Hillary Clinton Emails - Wall Street Journal (subscription)