Donald Trump wasn't the only president to attempt a return trip to the White House four years after he'd left the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt attempted his own comeback in 1912 and, like Trump, he was hit by a would-be assassin's bullet in the midst of his campaign. For TR, the shooting was nearly fatal - with only his glasses case and the folded pages his planned speech stop stopping the bullet from reaching his heart. Bleeding profusely, he insisted on delivering his address in any event -- one of the more bizarre political rallies in our history. The remarkable story, revealing TR's haunting, lifelong connection to death, is told in THE REAPER AND THE BULLMOOSE, the latest episode in our American Miracle podcast series.

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Napoleon Bonaparte was noted for conquering new territory for France, not giving away a huge portion of North America at the cost of mere pennies an Acre. A strange, haunting series of events made the Louisiana Purchase possible, and with it the acquisition of land that later became 15 new states. Those events included the brutal attempts to suppress the only successful slave rebellion in all human history, the unseasonal and unprecedented freezing over of an important Dutch Harbor, plus the skill and flexibility of American leaders who managed to overcome the partisan divisions that had begun to paralyze the young Republic.

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Six months after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy rules the Pacific, before a combination of good fortune and brilliant intelligence work come together in a fateful, five minute interlude that alters the tide of war and ends the grandiose dreams of Japanese empire.

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A Congregation of fervent religious dissidents risk everything to create an idealistic outpost at the edge of wilderness. Missing their initial destination by some 250 miles, they manage to connect with the one inhabitant in all of North America best-suited to help them escape starvation and death.

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The fiftieth anniversary "Jubilee" celebration of American Independence (July 4th, 1826) brings a startling development that convinces a new nation of its providential protection. On that festive day, the two patriotic heroes most responsible for declaring independence—Thomas Jefferson and John Adams—both lived to share in the festivities, but passed into eternity before the end of that same Glorious Fourth. Daniel Webster, the greatest orator of the era, and contemporary historians calculate the odds against such an undirected coincidence as utterly overwhelming.

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One of the questions that people are asking about the attempted assassination of President Trump last Saturday is whether it shows that there is special divine protection for Donald Trump. To answer the question about what this all means, there’s no better place to turn than the Bible. In the book of Exodus, chapter 33, there is a haunting passage that gives us a hint of an answer.

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A visionary engineer known as "Crazy Judah" dreams the impossible: a transcontinental railroad that connects a vast country recently divided by civil war. In the process, he receives passionate support from Abraham Lincoln and, many observers believed, from the supernatural forces that had previously favored and protected the United States.

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Two near-death experiences for the Secretary of State in April of 1865 -- a carriage accident and a savage attack by a knife-wielding would be assassin -- ended up working together to spare the life of William Henry Seward, enabling the fateful land grab that contemporary Russians blame for their defeat in the Cold War.

The American Miracle is part of the Airwave podcast network. Contact [email protected] to inquire about sponsoring this podcast.

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On The American Miracle, bestselling author and radio host Michael Medved recounts some of the most significant events in America’s rise to prosperity and power, from the writing of the Constitution to the Civil War. He reveals a record of improbabilities and amazements that demonstrate what the Founders always believed: that events unfolded according to a master plan, with destiny playing an unmistakable role in lifting the nation to greatness.

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On a crisp January morning in the forested foothills of the Sierra Nevada, in part of the remote Mexican province of California, a frontier carpenter spotted a few shiny pebbles in a drainage ditch. Little did he know that in the same week he validated his discovery as unusually pure gold, the suddenly valuable territory passed from Mexican possession to that of the United States. The result: the most rapid mass migration in American history and a transformation that led the young nation to a fateful rise in economic power. As one observer noted at the time, "It had been so ordered by Providence that the gold might not be discovered until California should be in the hands of the Americans.”

The peace treaty with Mexico that ended the Mexican War was negotiated by one of the great unsung heroes of our history, Nicholas Trist. A former aide to James Madison and Andrew Jackson, married to Thomas Jefferson's granddaughter, Trist defied a president and risked arrest. As chief clerk of the State Department, with no official sanction, he broke every rule to make the monumental deal that changed the world.

The American Miracle is part of the Airwave podcast network. Contact [email protected] to inquire about sponsoring this podcast.

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