Melania Trump watched ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blow himself up in a compound in Syria during the 2019 U.S. raid while she sat in the Situation Room with her husband and other high-ranking officials, according to a memoir set to come out Tuesday. Ex-Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley were in the room, according to Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield & the Pentagon about America’s Most Dangerous Enemies by former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. “Her presence was unexpected, to say the least,” Miller wrote, according to The Hill, which obtained a copy. “I wondered how it would play in the press if word got out that the first lady had popped in to watch a major military operation.” Officials in the room spit out comments and guesses as the military approached the compound, Miller wrote, with Melania Trump looking “up in horror” at one of the descriptions. After al-Baghdadi’s explosive vest killed him, two of his wives, and two of his children, the first lady suggested Donald Trump push a story about Conan, the “hero dog” who was injured by a live wire. “You should talk about the dog,” she told her husband, according to Miller’s book. “Everyone loves dogs.”
