Former first lady Melania Trump was apparently present in the White House Situation Room as a “major military operation” was underway, according to a new book, and this has heightened concerns among National Security and legal experts, Raw Story reports.

In his book, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, in October 2019, Melania Trump “sat in and watched the U.S. raid that led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a compound in Syria,” according to The Hill, which excerpted Miller’s memoir Soldier Secretary. Miller was a special assistant to the president for counterterrorism and transnational threats.

Melania Trump, her husband then-president Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley were all inside the situation as the operation transpired.

The first lady’s appearance left Miller a bit flabbergasted, to say the least.

“Her presence was unexpected, to say the least, Miller writes. “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.”

And apparently, Melania is the one who suggested the administration publicize the “hero dog” that was involved in the raid. The dog, named Conan, was part of the operation to kill al-Baghdadi and was injured during the raid. But this being the Trump White House, it wasn’t long before this turned into a giant faux pas, either because Trump got the dog’s name wrong, or the wrong dog wound up in the Oval Office.

This fun debacle led The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen to write a piece on “Conan, the Gender-Fluid Hero Dog.”

“Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the President, refused to commit to a gender for Conan,” Gessen wrote, per Raw Story. “Pressed by reporters on Tuesday, she said ‘I won’t do that, because then you’ll say that I was talking about somebody’s sex or gender, so I’m not doing that.”

Larry Pfeiffer, former President Barack Obama’s director of the White House Situation Room and former Chief of Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency was definitely angry that Melania Trump was in the Situation Room during a critical military operation.

“Hmmm…what would I have done if President Obama had brought Michelle into a sensitive meeting there? Don’t know. Never had to think about it cuz it NEVER would have happened,” he wrote on Twitter.

Fmr WH Situation Room Sr Director here: Hmmm…what would I have done if President Obama had brought Michelle into a sensitive meeting there?

Don’t know. Never had to think about it cuz it NEVER would have happened. https://t.co/myl1FwbBOv

— Larry Pfeiffer (@LarryPfeifferDC) February 7, 2023

I can’t picture Obama inviting Michelle into the Situation Room for an operation that involves national security, nor can I imagine President Biden inviting Jill for this either, can you? I also can’t imagine Jill Biden or Michelle Obama would even want to be there.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, now a professor of law, MSNBC legal contributor, and podcaster, observed: “Melania in the situation room, top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago that Trump knew were there & refused to return. Private meetings with Putin where Trump insisted translator’s notes be destroyed. The Trump administration was a national security nightmare.”

Melania in the situation room, top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago that Trump knew were there & refused to return. Private meetings with Putin where Trump insisted translator's notes be destroyed. The Trump administration was a national security nightmare. https://t.co/BAH3jcPF3Z

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) February 7, 2023

And frankly, the dog incident is really stupid. But Melania apparently talked him into the idea by telling him “everyone loves dogs,” notes Vanity Fair’s political correspondent Bess Levin.

“Everyone, of course, except Donald Trump, who has a well-established disdain for animals in general and dogs in particular. (The only president in more than a century to live in the White House without a pet, Trump’s ex-wife Ivana wrote in her 2017 memoir that ‘Donald was not a dog fan,’ and that her poodle, Chappy, would ‘bark at him territorially’ whenever he got near her closet,” Levin writes. “Trump also has a long history of denigrating ex-employees and other perceived enemies by comparing them to dogs, tweeting that his enemies have ‘choked like a dog,’ been ‘dumped like a dog,’ been ‘fired like a dog,’ and, our personal favorite, been ‘kicked out of the ABC News debate like a dog.”)

Mitt Romney had his chance to beat a failed president but he choked like a dog. Now he calls me racist-but I am least racist person there is

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 11, 2016

Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018

Union Leader refuses to comment as to why they were kicked out of the ABC News debate like a dog. For starters, try getting a new publisher!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2016

I don’t know why Melania was in the Situation Room on that particular day but it’s understandable if top officials are concerned about this, and the whole thing was definitely a fiasco. Just exactly how safe was national security under this clearly incompetent administration? One wonders.