(dramatic music)

- They're bizarre, but they're true tales

from America's history.

Many of them, you maynever have heard before.

Are they the result of coincidence

or the hands of Providence?

Michael Medved leaves no doubt

in the pages of hislatest book, take a look.

- [Woman] You mightcall them the accidents

or bizarre coincidences of history,

but author Michael Medved

calls them flat out miracles

that shaped America's destiny.

Like the time Theodore Roosevelt

was shot in the chest

by a would be assassin whilecampaigning for President,

but the bullet hit a folded up speech

in his jacket pocket and saved his life.

Or when U.S. planes gotlost over empty ocean

during the Battle of Midway,

then miraculously reconnected

for five minutes of dive bombing

that wrecked Japan's fleet,

convincing even enemy commanders

that high powers intervened against them.

Or how Abraham Lincoln'sSecretary of State,

William Seward, miraculouslysurvived a knife attack,

allowing him two years later

to acquire Alaska for the United States.

These stories and more

are told in Medved's latest book,

"God's hand on America:

"Divine Providence in the Modern Era".

- Author and radio host,Michael Medved, joins us now.

Michael, it's so good to see you again.

- It's great to see you, Pat.

- Hey, listen.

You know, Obama was asked,is America exceptional?

And he said, oh, no, no.

His father was a Kenyan

and there are a lot of exceptional people.

You really believe Americais exceptional, don't you?

- Well, I do.

And what's interesting,

is Obama even at the endof his administration,

came around to that.

And what's remarkable to me

is how many of our leaders,

right through our history,

including people like FranklinRoosevelt and John Kennedy,

understood that there was something

beyond understanding in this country.

And I mean, lots of people say

that America is the product

of a series of happy accidents,

but a pattern of happyaccidents is still a pattern.

That's evidence of intelligent design,

if I can use that term.

- [Pat] You certainly can (laughs).

- Instead of random evolution.

- So it's intelligent to lie

that God himself has beenlooking after this nation

since its founding.

It is it is exceptional, isn't it?

- Yes, it is.

And by the way, MartinLuther King believed that.

One of my last chapters inthe book is about Dr. King,

who prophesied his own death,

prophesied its meaning,

and actually deeply, deeply believed.

There's a story thatpeople should remember

on Martin Luther King Day

about what he called thekitchen table conversion,

where God spoke to him in 1957

in the midst of theMontgomery Bus Boycott,

and turned him around and gave him

the courage to continue.- He said God spoke to him

at the kitchen table?

- [Michael] Correct, right.

He had just been arrested,

and he was going through this agony,

but he believed that what he was doing

was not only servingGod but serving America.

And the last speech of his life,

which was less than 12 hours

before he was assassinated,

that speech he talked about

how extraordinary America was

and about the hand of God,

and how grateful he was

that God had allowed him to live

and to serve in the time that he did.

- Are the progressives tryingto take this away from us?

Are they trying to takeit away in our schools?

- Well, they do it withFranklin Roosevelt too,

which is another.

See, their stuff.

I studied American history, you know,

and there is stuff that I wasn't taught

that I didn't know about.

In a space of 14 months,in the early 1930s,

both Winston Churchilland Franklin Roosevelt

had near death experiences

that they both understood

it was the hand of destiny sparing them.

Franklin Roosevelt hadbeen elected president

in a landslide in 1932.

He went on a yachting tripto build up his strength

before he came to take the oath of office

and to become our president.

And he was speaking in a park in Miami

when he was coming back.

There were five shots firedat him from 30 feet away.

- [Pat] None of them it him?

- None of them hit him.

There were three bystanderswho were seriously wounded.

The mayor of Chicago,Tony Cermak, was killed

and Roosevelt understood.

And by the way,

when you listen to his D-Dayprayer that he delivers,

he says that we arefighting for our faith.

He uses that term, and forChristian civilization.

- Speaking of Roosevelt,

I didn't know how bad Henry Wallace was

when he was Roosevelt's vice president.

And the last days

when Roosevelt was his last term,

you've pointed out so pointedly.

There's a convention

and they wanted to put Wallace

into nomination for the vice presidency.

And the Truman's man was the chairman,

and Claude Pepper isrunning down franticly,

so tell us about that.

- You know, it's an amazing thing.

Henry Wallace is the VicePresident of the United States,

Roosevelt decides to go for a fourth term.

He assures Wallace,

of course you'll buy my running mate,

same old team as before.

But there was a group,and they were believers,

they happened to be devout Catholics.

There was a group that called themselves

The Conspiracy of the Pure of Heart,

who understood that Henry Wallace

had deep communistconnections, and he did.

And how do we know,

because he renouncedthat later in his life

after all this was over.

And this I had never been taught,

and people don't knowthis about Henry Wallace.

He wrote a piece called,"Where I Was Wrong",

where he talks about theprofound evil of communism,

which he turned against.

However, to dump him as vice president

required all these thingsto fall into place.

And one of them, as you described,

they were about to renominatevice president Wallace

for the vice presidency.

Roosevelt dies 82 daysinto his fourth term.

And here's the point,

is that Claude Pepper isrunning down to nominate Wallace

and they gavelled theconvention into adjournment.

And people booed, but thatwas what they needed to do

to go the next day to actuallynominate Harry Truman.

Who of course, was very much a believer,

which is why he recognized Israel

against the wishes ofhis state department.

The entire thing falls into place

in such a remarkable way.- If Roosevelt dies

and Wallace becomes his successor,

then he would've moved the country

under the Russian orbit.

He was communist in those days.

- He was at that point,

and the people surrounding him

were communist agents, unfortunately.

And look, this is.

The other thing,

in that same period of time,

and this is something again,

most people who even know about Churchill

don't know about this.

Churchill Christmas time

in 1931,

Churchill is visiting New York,

because he's doing a speaking tour.

And he has run down on Fifth Avenue,

because he's not following the traffic.

And a car hits him at 35 miles an hour,

and comes within inchesof squashing his head.

- [Pat] Wow.

- And Churchill says,

"I don't know why I was spared."

But of course, he was aware,

the same way President Reagan was.

When President Reagan escaped death,

he had a bullet in the chest

as Theodore Roosevelt did.

And all of these deliverances,

I think what's striking,

is that our prior leaders look to see,

well what does this mean?

What does this mean?

What message is God sending?

And I think it's tremendously important

that we go back to that.

- Let me talk about one thing in the book

is that, you know,

Alaska was called Seward's Folly.

But here this enormous hunk of land,

Seward apparently, you said

he had some kind of a throatcondition or something?

- No, he had a carriage accident.

This is one of these unbelievable things,

that again people don't learn about,

but I want people to know the story.

William Henry Seward, secretary of state,

the Civil War's almost over.

He goes out for a carriage ride

with his son and his daughter,

and he does that on April 5, of 1865.

There's a terrible carriage accident,

he almost dies.

He almost drowns in his own blood.

He breaks both theupper and the lower jaw.

He breaks an arm.

He is badly bad, in terrible shape.

They rigged up for him

a metal brace over his jaw

wound up with canvas.

So the night that Lincoln is killed,

part of the Booth Conspiracy

was to send Lewis Powellto Seward's house.

They knew that he wassick and lying in bed.

Powell brings the knife downfour times to cut his jugular,

and the knife blade hits this metal

that he had experiencedbecause of the carriage ride.

- He was part of theconspiracy of Booth too?

- Correct

- To kill Seward?

- To kill Seward.

There was another, George Atzerodt

was supposed to kill the VicePresident Andrew Johnson.

And he got drunk

and chickened out,

but Powell did it.

Powell was hanged for the attempted murder

of Secretary of State Seward.

But here's the point,

Seward, if he hasn'tlived, Russian America,

Russia remains part owner of Alaska.

And Putin, recently in 2017,

they had the 150th anniversary

of the sale of Alaska to America.

And people close to Putin declared

that if they had not given away Alaska,

Russia would have won the Cold War.

- [Pat] That's incredible.

- Would not have fallen apart.

- When they sold it, what was it,

19 cents an acre or something.

- Exactly right, and itwas totally Seward's doing.

Now here's the other thing,Pat, that nobody knows,

during the negotiation for Alaska,

Seward has a paper come over his desk

as Secretary of State andhe takes it on himself.

Doesn't consult the president anything,

basically signs his name

to acquire a little scrap of land,

two and a half square miles

in the middle of the Pacific, Midway.

- [Pat] My.

- And without Seward doing that,

without Seward living throughthis assassination attempt,

without this thing being on his neck--

- The Battle of Midway.

- The Battle of Midway,

which changes the whole course of history.

And were the people involved.

And again, this moved me,

because I didn't know itbefore doing the book.

There was a lead pilot at Midway

who was supposed to leadthe Japanese into combat,

but he had appendicitis the day before.

so he wasn't fun to come.

His name was Mitsuo Fuchida,

and he had been the leadpilot of Pearl Harbor.

He became a Christian,

because he saw God'shand protecting America,

and came to America.

He appeared with Billy Graham,

may he rest in peace,nine different times.

And basically, it was so clear

the miraculous natureof the Battle of Midway,

it changed his life.

- Well now, the Americanaviators were lost,

then they suddenly found Midway.

What was the story?

- They were coming from threedifferent aircraft carriers,

the Hornet, and theEnterprise, and the Yorktown.

And they're three different squadrons,

and they're lookingfor the Japanese fleet.

And they couldn't find it,

and they're running out of fuel.

And there's a great hero named McClusky,

who's saying, "No, no,we have to keep going."

They were gonna run out of fuel,

and all of a sudden they saw a destroyer,

and then they followed.

And then the three squadronsran into each other,

and they hit.

And in five minutes,

they hit three of thefour Japanese carriers.

They sank the fourth later.

And it changed the course

of all of human history,

'cause it won the war

in the Pacific.- But Seward had to be alive

in order to buy Midway,which was, oh, man.

- [Michael] Right, it's all important

to go back to prime cause, right?

- Ladies and gentlemen,this is fascinating?

"God's Hand on America", Michael Medved.

If you wanna believe inthe Lord and his goodness,

this is a book that'll tell you about it.

I remember

what one

particular investor said,

"I won the ovarian lotteryby being born in America."

But it's just, it was so much more.

This book you wanna hear,

but it's called, "God's Hand in America".

It's just been released.

It's wherever books are sold.

- Thank you Pat.- Michael,

thank you, my friend.

God Bless.- Thanks, God Bless.