Six shots rang out. A Secret Service agent stepped in front of Reagan, was shot in the chest; shoving Reagan into the backseat of a limousine another agent landed on top of him pinning him to the floor; Reagan felt a stab of pain in his ribs, coughed up bubbly blood – he collapsed walking into the hospital.

Doctors searched, couldn’t find a bullet wound.

Body signs sinking, heartbeat erratic, laying on a gurney Reagan prayed; a voice said Jim Brady – who’d been shot in the head – was dying. Reagan said a prayer for Brady. They wheeled in a police officer who’d been shot in the throat; Reagan heard another voice say the young boy who’d shot him had been captured – and he was crazy. Staring up at the ceiling, lungs filling with blood, struggling to breathe, faith whispered, Reagan said a prayer for the man who shot him. He later wrote in his diary he couldn’t pray to God to save him while hating another man.

Doctors found a tear in the side of Reagan’s coat jacket, found a tiny slit under his right arm; the bullet had ricocheted off the limousine, flattened, sliced into his body, sealing the wound behind it, punctured his lung, stopped an inch from his heart.

Look around you at politics today – and compare that to Reagan praying for the man who shot him.

(This story is in my memoir The Trail of the Serpent.)