"James Comey cost (Hillary Clinton) the election," former president Bill Clinton told reporters earlier this month. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Former President Bill Clinton told a gaggle of holiday shoppers in Westchester County, New York, earlier this month that he doesn't think much of Donald Trump or his electoral victory.
Holding court with a group of about 10 shoppers in an independent bookstore in Katonah – about 10 miles from the Clintons' home in Chappaqua – Clinton "needed to talk as eagerly as we wanted to listen" about the results of last month's presidential election, according to a column penned by a journalist with The Bedford-Pound Ridge Record-Review.
"He doesn't know much," Clinton said of Trump. "One thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him."
The impromptu meeting last Saturday, taking on the tone of a group therapy session, happened the day after the revelation that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded Russia's interference in the election was intended to help Trump defeat the former president's wife, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Bill Clinton scoffed at the idea that anyone should be surprised by that conclusion.
"You would need to have a single-digit IQ not to recognize what was going on" he said.
Nor was he impressed by the Trump team's assertions that his Electoral College victory was massive and historic. With electors meeting to cast votes on Monday, Trump's projected win actually ranks 46th out of 58 presidential elections.
"Landslide? I got something like 370 electoral votes" in 1992, Clinton said. "That was a landslide."
But it was FBI Director James Comey's October letter notifying congressional lawmakers the agency had turned up new emails potentially related to the investigation into the former secretary of state's use of a private server that turned the tide, Clinton said.
"James Comey cost her the election," Clinton said, stating that "we were 7 points up" when the letter went out 10 days before the election.
Clinton also said the response to a follow-up letter a week later from the FBI director that said the new emails had not changed the agency's decision not to recommend criminal charges against the Democratic nominee received relatively little notice.
Still, the former president offered encouragement to the group of shoppers, some of whom expressed dismay at the prospect of Trump in the White House.
A mother whose 6-year old son posed for a photo with Clinton said the child, upon learning that Trump had won, had told her he "wanted to go back to sleep for four years."
"No, we can't go to sleep, we need to stay active," Clinton said.
We're living in a "post-truth era where facts don't matter," Clinton said in response to another woman. In the columnist's words, he urged the onlookers to stay vigilant and alert, and preached a message that "we need to see where this changing political reality takes us."
Gabrielle Levy covers politics for U.S. News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter (@gabbilevy) or email her at GLevy@usnews.com.
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