Donald Trump beckoned his wife to the most secure room in the White House one Saturday in the autumn of 2019. There, in spite of the fact that she lacked a security clearance, Melania Trump learned the classified identity of the furry U.S. soldier who chased the leader of the ISIS terrorist group to his death.
“Sadly, he sustained some injuries,” she recounts of the soldier in her eponymous memoir “Melania” set to be released on Tuesday, a copy of which was viewed by the Daily Beast.
It was a “seemingly normal” weekend, she writes, until “I was caught off guard when I received a call informing me that the president wanted to see me in the Oval Office.” When she arrived, she says, “I was directed to join him in the Situation Room—a first and unique experience for me.”
“’Watch this incredible action at work,’ Donald whispered to me,” she recalls in her book’s 14th chapter.
And perhaps if Melania Trump hadn’t been summoned to the Situation Room, the soldier who stole her heart—a black-faced Belgian Malinois named Conan—wouldn’t have later been invited to the White House and given a medal as she had proposed.
The former president wanted his wife to see the U.S. military operation that was unfolding inside the fortified command center where highly classified and clandestine intelligence operations are monitored in real time by presidents, vice presidents and the nation’s top military and intelligence officials.
The moment crystallized the unorthodoxy of former President Trump and his wife. She witnessed the raid that killed the leader of the ISIS terrorist organization, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and hailed the “crucial role” that Conan played. The dog was the only member of the Delta team injured in the mission when al-Baghdadi, while holding two of his children, detonated an explosive vest.
“After his recovery, we were honored to welcome him to the White House to present him with a medal for his exceptional courage,” she writes.
Publication of Melania Trump’s memoir, which she has heavily promoted on social media and in interviews on Fox News, comes as her husband is locked in a neck-and-neck presidential race against Kamala Harris. She shares views in the book, including her support of abortion rights, that could potentially be selling points to like-minded Republican women who have qualms about Trump.
In her memoir, the former and possibly future first lady, a former model who was born in a village in the former Yugoslavia, says she didn’t just sit there during the tense and daring raid—she asked questions.
“Curious about the specifics, I inquired about the number of troops involved, and the details were explained to me,” she writes, listing several of the high-level officials who were in the room. Notably, she does not refer to Mike Pence by name—only as “the vice president.”
She also notably does not denounce the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol in her book and espouses her husband’s election denial claims, saying, “Many Americans still have doubts about the election to this day. I am not the only person who questions the results.”
Former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller wrote about Melania Trump’s surprise appearance in the Situation Room in his own memoir published last year, saying, “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.”
Besides the Trumps and Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was in the Situation Room during the raid, as was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who Trump suggested last year should be executed. When he retired last year, Milley seemed to be speaking about Trump when he said, “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”
“The mission to eliminate the leader of ISIS was a significant objective, and the successful completion of this operation would be a major accomplishment,” Melania writes in her memoir. “This pivotal moment was one that Donald wanted to share with me.”
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