Hillary Clinton Gatekeeper Philippe Reines Early Thursday Said He Regretted A Crude Wednesday Tweet About The Wife Of President Donald Trump’s Son Donald Trump, Jr., But Then Threatened The President’s Son In The Same Message In Which He Was Supposedly Apologizing.

To the president’s son, whose wife he was apologizing to for the crude insult he sent out, Reines issued a veiled threat: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Reines also threatened supporters of President Trump, telling them to “shove it.”

Reines came under fire significantly from all sides after he sent what one senior ex-Trump White House aide told Breitbart News was a “morally repulsive” message to Vanessa Trump, Donald Trump Jr.’s wife. – READ MORE</s>Donald Trump's face will feature on an Israeli coin marking the 70th anniversary of the country's independence.

It depicts the US President alongside the biblical King Cyrus, who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem 2,500 years ago.

The coin, which cannot be used as currency, is also a token of gratitude for Mr Trump's decision to move the US embassy from to Jerusalem, KOBI reported.

Nonprofit organisation The Mikdash Educational Center has made 1,000 of the half-shekel celebratory coins.

The standard version, made from pewter and plated with silver, will be sold for £36.

There is also a limited series of gold-plated coins which will sell for £52.

'President Trump is starting a prophetic process by moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem,' Mikdash representative Rabbi Mordechai Persoff told KOBI.

'Just like King Cyrus 2,500 years ago said, "he charged me to build a house in Jerusalem", here again, President Trump is building a house in Jerusalem.'

The seal of the United States government also features on the face of the coin, along with biblical verses written in in Hebrew.

On the back is a dove, holding an olive branch in its beak, above a temple.

Posters and billboards praising Donald Trump and his decision to pull out of the nuclear deal with Iran have been put up in the streets of Jerusalem today.</s>Hillary Said ISIS Is ‘Rooting for Donald Trump’ — Now, Trump Has a Huge Announcement Showing the Opposite

In 2016, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed that ISIS was “rooting for Donald Trump.” She explained that ISIS leaders had made it “very clear” that they are “essentially throwing whatever support they have to Donald Trump.”

“They have said that they hope that he is the president because it would give even more motivation to every jihadi,” she said.

According to NBC News, Iraqi state TV claimed that the five leaders Trump is referring to are Saddam al-Jammel, Mohamed al-Qadeer, Ismail al-Eithawi, Omar al-Karbouli, and Essam al-Zawbai. The New York Times reported they had been hiding in Syria and Turkey and had been tracked for three months by the United States. – READ MORE</s>WASHINGTON -- Five senior leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) were captured in a joint operation involving U.S. and Iraqi forces. It is the latest defeat for the extremist group, which has lost nearly all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria.

The ISIS commanders' confessions were broadcast on Iraqi television this morning.

One by one, men in yellow jumpsuits and handcuffs admitted to being top ISIS leaders.

Their capture was the result of an elaborate intelligence operation run by Iraq and the U.S.

President Trump tweeted the announcement earlier Thursday.

Five Most Wanted leaders of ISIS just captured! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2018

First came the capture of Ismail al-Eithawi, described as a close aide to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

U.S. and Iraqi forces then used an app on Eithawi's mobile phone to lure the other men across the Syrian border and into Iraq where they were arrested.

The Iraqi government said information gather during interrogations led to an air strike it claims killed another 40 ISIS terrorists.

"These guys ... have an understanding of what's happened to ISIS post-caliphate, where the senior leaders are in general ... what their plans might be for going forward," former acting director of the CIA and CBS News senior national security contributor Michael Morrell said.

U.S. officials say ISIS leadership has been decimated through airstrikes and ground operations. But al-Baghdadi is believed to still be operating on the border between Syria and Iraq.

A still photo from video posted on a militant website July 5, 2014, purports to show the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, delivering a sermon at a mosque in Iraq during his first public appearance. Militant video/AP

"He is the main individual we are after, for two reasons," Morrell explained. "One is his removal would be a symbol of the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and he is a galvanizing force holding the rest of the group together. So if he went away, it would splinter apart."

U.S. officials view al-Baghdadi as a threat because in the last few years he has inspired attacks in the U.S., such as the 2015 San Bernardino attack which killed 14. The shooters in that incident pledged their allegiance to the ISIS leader.</s>Through all of this, President Trump has remained steadfast in his support, while the U.S. military continues to provide aerial refueling for Saudi air strikes as well as the bombs used to kill so many of those civilians. But why? In a word: Saudi Arabian and UAE money in prodigious amounts flowing into Trump’s world — to U.S. arms makers and to dozens of lobbyists, public-relations firms, and influential think tanks in Washington.

Saudi Arabia’s influence over Donald Trump hit an initial peak in his first presidential visit abroad, which began in Riyadh in May 2017. The Saudi royals, who had clearly grasped the nature of The Donald, offered him the one thing he seems to love most: flattery, flattery, and more flattery. The kingdom rolled out the red carpet big time. The fanfare included posting banners with photos of President Trump and Saudi King Salman along the roadside from the airport to Riyadh, projecting a five-story-high image of Trump onto the side of the hotel where he would stay, and hosting a male-invitees-only concert by country singer Toby Keith.

According to the Washington Post, “The Saudis hosted the Trumps and the Kushners at the family’s royal palace, ferried them around in golf carts, and celebrated Trump with a multimillion-dollar gala in his honor, complete with a throne-like seat for the president.” In addition, they presented him with the Abdul-Aziz al-Saud medal, a trinket named for Saudi Arabia’s first king, considered the highest honor the kingdom can bestow on a foreign leader.

The Saudis then gave Trump something he undoubtedly valued even more than all the fawning — a chance to pose as the world’s greatest deal maker. For the trip, Trump brought along a striking collection of CEOs from major American companies, including Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, and Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group. Big numbers on the potential value of future U.S.-Saudi business deals were tossed around, including $110 billion in arms sales and hundreds of billions more in investments in energy, petrochemicals, and infrastructure, involving projects in both countries.

The new president was anything but shy in claiming credit for such potential mega-deals. At a press conference, he crowed about “tremendous investments in the United States… and jobs, jobs, jobs.” On his return to the U.S., he promptly bragged at a cabinet meeting that his deal-making would “bring many thousands of jobs to our country… In fact, will bring millions of jobs ultimately.” Not surprisingly, no analysis was offered to back up such claims, but it’s already clear that some of these deals may never come to fruition and many of those that do are more likely to create jobs in Saudi Arabia than in the United States.

Still, President Trump’s love affair with that country’s royals only intensified, leading to a triumphant U.S. visit last month by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the power behind the throne in that nation. He is also the architect of its brutal Yemeni war, where, in addition to those thousands of civilians killed thanks to indiscriminate air strikes, millions have been put at risk of famine due to a Saudi-led blockade of the country. But neither of these activities that, Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu has noted, “look like war crimes” nor Saudi Arabia’s abysmal internal human rights record drew a discouraging word from Trump or anyone in his cabinet. First things first. There were business deals to be touted — and so they were.

Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House took place on the very day that the Senate was considering a bill to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni bombing campaign. While senators debated the constitutional authority of Congress to declare war and the human-rights impact of U.S. support for the Saudi war effort, Trump was boasting yet again about all those jobs that arms sales to Saudi Arabia would create, adding — in a sign of the total success of the Saudi charm offensive — that the relationship between the two countries “is now probably as good as it’s really ever been” and “will probably only get better.”

The centerpiece of Trump’s meeting was a show-and-tell performance focused on how Saudi arms sales would boost American jobs. As he sang the praises of those Saudi purchases, he brandished a map of the United States with the legend “KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] Deals Pending” above a red oval that said “40,000 U.S. jobs.” Prominent among them were jobs in the swing states that put Trump over the top in the 2016 elections: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida. Score another point for Saudi influence in the form of Trump’s firm belief that his relationship with that regime will bolster his future political prospects.

So the public courtship of Trump by the Saudi royals is already paying large dividends, but public flattery and massive arms deals are just the better-known part of the picture. The president has been heavily courted privately as well, both through personal connections and through an expansive lobbying operation, which it’s important to map out, even if there’s no administration show-and-tell on the subject.

As a start — as has been widely publicized — Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and officially anointed point man on Middle Eastern peace (an outcome he is uniquely ill-equipped to deliver), has struck up a beautiful friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Their relationship was solidified at a March 2017 lunch at the White House, followed by numerous phone calls and several Kushner visits to Saudi Arabia, including one shortly before the prince cracked down on his domestic rivals. Though that crackdown was publicly justified as an anti-corruption move, it conveniently targeted anyone who could conceivably have stood in the way of bin Salman’s consolidation of power. According to Michael Wolff in Fire and Fury, after bin Salman’s power play, Trump joyfully toldKushner, “We’ve put our man on top!” — an indication that Kushner had offered a Trump stamp of approval to the prince’s political maneuver during his trip to Riyadh.

The friendship has clearly paid off handsomely for the Saudis. Kushner was reportedly the main advocate for having Trump make his first foreign visit to that country — over the objections of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who felt it would send the wrong signal to allies about Trump’s attitudes towards democracy and autocracy (as indeed it did). Kushner also strongly urged Trump to back a Saudi-UAE blockade and propaganda campaign against the Gulf state of Qatar, which Trump forcefully did with a tweet: “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to horror of terrorism!”

Trump later changed his mind on this issue — after learning that Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military air base in the Middle East and after Qatar launched a PR and lobbying offensive of its own. That small, ultra-wealthy state hired nine lobbying and public relations firms, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s, in the two months after the Saudi-UAE blockade began, according to filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Most notably, the Qataris agreed to spend $12 billion on U.S. combat aircraft just weeks after Trump’s tweet.

Wherever Trump ultimately ends up on the campaign against Qatar (driven in part by a Saudi belief that its emir hasn’t sufficiently toed a tough enough line on Iran), Kushner’s role in the affair gives new spin to the old phrase “The personal is the political.” According to a source who spoke to veteran reporter Dexter Filkins, Kushner’s antipathy toward Qatar may have been driven in part by anger over its unwillingness to bail his father out of a bad Manhattan real estate investment with a massive loan.

Another snapshot of the Saudi-UAE urge to get up close and personal with The Donald lies in the strange case of George Nader, a political operative and senior advisor to the UAE, and Elliott Broidy, who reportedly can get face time with President Trump as needed. Nader evidently successfully persuaded Broidy to privately press Trump to take positions ever more in line with Saudi and UAE interests on Qatar and in their urge to see Secretary of State Rex Tillerson head for the exit. Whether or not Broidy’s appeals were instrumental in Trump’s decisions, he can’t be faulted for lack of effort. His exploits underscore how far both countries are willing to go in their efforts to bend U.S. foreign policy to their needs and interests.

In his campaign to win over Broidy, Nader gave him a cool $2.7 million to fund an anti-Qatar conference sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a sum that was also followed by more than $600,000 in donations for Republican candidates.

The keynote speaker at that conference was House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, who then crafted a sanctions bill against Qatar and — miracle of miracles — shortly thereafter received a campaign contribution from Broidy. Wherever those funds came from, it strains credulity to believe that this was all coincidental. To sweeten the deal, Nader also dangled the prospect of major contracts for Broidy’s private security firm, Circinus. One deal with the UAE, for $200 million, has already been sealed, while a Saudi one is in the works. At this point, who knows whether any of this was illegal, but in the world of Washington influence peddling, what’s legal is often as scandalous as what’s not.

If such deep connections between Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration sometimes seem to surface out of nowhere, they all too often stem from an extraordinarily influential, if largely unpublicized, Saudi lobbying and public relations campaign.

Following the November election, the Saudis wasted no time in adding more firepower to their already robust influence operation in this country. In the less than three months before Trump was sworn in as president in January 2017, the Saudis inked contracts with three new firms: a Republican-oriented one, the McKeon Group (whose namesake, Howard “Buck” McKeon, is the recently retired chairman of the House Armed Services Committee); the CGCN Group, a firm well connected to conservative Republicans whose clientele also includes Boeing, which sells bombs to Saudi Arabia; and an outfit associated with the Democrats, the Podesta Group, which later dissolved after revelations about its work with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Russian banks under sanction.

Before Trump even made it to Riyadh that May, according to an analysis of Foreign Agents Registration Act records, the Saudis signed contracts with six more public relations firms and then added two more immediately after severing diplomatic ties with Qatar in early June. All told, in just the first year of the Trump administration, the Saudis spent more than a million dollars monthly on more than two dozen registered lobbying and public relations outfits. The UAE was not far behind, boasting 18 registered lobbying and public relations firms in 2017, including more than $10 million dollars that year alone that went to just one of them, the Camstoll Group.

All this lobbying firepower gave those two countries an unparalleled ability to steer U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East. Among other avenues of influence, their campaign included a steady stream of propaganda flowing to policymakers about the war in Yemen.

Large foreign lobbies of this sort also enjoy an even more direct path to influence through campaign contributions. While it’s illegal for foreign nationals to make such contributions in U.S. elections, there’s an easy workaround for that — just hire lobbyists to do it for you. Such firms and figures have, in the past, admitted to serving as middlemen in this fashion and are known to have sometimes given handsomely. For example, a study by Maplight and the International Business Times found that registered lobbyists working at just four firms hired by the Saudis gave more than half a million dollars to federal candidates in the 2016 elections.

Another important avenue of influence for the Saudis and Emiratis: their financial contributions to Washington’s think tanks. The full extent of their reach in this area is hard to grasp because think tanks and other non-profits aren’t required to disclose their donors and many choose not to do so. However, an eye-opening New York Times exposé in 2014 revealed an expansive list of think tanks that received money from the Saudis or Emiratis, including the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Middle East Institute. In the age of Trump, it’s a reasonable bet that it has only gotten worse.

There is more at stake in Washington’s present web of ties to those two lands than just business. The uncritical embrace of such reckless, extreme, and undemocratic regimes by President Trump and many members of Congress has far-reaching implications for the future of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has asserted that Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “makes Hitler look good” and has suggested military action against Iran on a number of occasions. Add to this the prince’s successful efforts to keep the Trump administration on board in supporting his war in Yemen, plus Riyadh’s political interference in Qatar and Lebanon, and there is a real danger that Trump’s uncritical embrace of the Saudi regime could spark a regional war. The indiscriminate killing of Yemenis by the Saudi coalition, with the help of U.S. weapons, has already contributed to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, while reportedly making the al-Qaeda franchise in Yemen “stronger than ever.”

There is much concern in official Washington about Trump’s seemingly cavalier attitude towards longstanding U.S. alliances, but in the case of Saudi Arabia, a major change of course would undoubtedly be advisable. The least we can do is help make sure that the people of Yemen don’t fear for their lives at their own weddings.</s>The United States President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that five "most wanted" ISIL leaders have been captured in Iraq.

"Five Most Wanted leaders of ISIS just captured!," Trump wrote on his official Twitter account, after the Iraqi state television on Wednesday said the country's intelligence agency lured the ISIL terrorists into crossing Syria and arrested them.

Col. Ryan Dillon, the U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve’s (CJTF-OIR) spokesman also mentioned the arrest of five ISIL leaders in his Twitter post.

"Iraq captures 5 key ISIL leaders during Operation Round up. The arrest is a significant blow to ISIL...," he said, adding: “CJTF-OIR is committed to lasting defeat of ISIL and setting conditions for stabilization."

On Wednesday, the Iraqi state television announced the capturing of the high ranking ISIL terrorists and published their photographs and identity cards.

Iraqi security sources, who wished to remain anonymous due to restrictions on speaking to the media, said the terror group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is hiding somewhere at the Iraq-Syria border.

Last December, officials in Baghdad declared that ISIL's military presence in Iraq had been all but dismantled over operations backed by the U.S.-led International Alliance.

However, from time to time, Iraqi officials announce operations against ISIL-affiliated "sleeper cells" in certain parts of the country.</s>BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces in co-ordination with U.S.-backed Syrian forces have captured five senior ISIL leaders, the U.S.-led coalition said Thursday in a statement.

The arrest was a “significant blow to Daesh,” coalition spokesman Army Col. Ryan Dillon said, using the Arabic acronym for the extremist group.

A Pentagon spokesman, Marine Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, said the U.S. credited Iraqi security forces with the militants’ capture “on the Iraq-Syria border.”

“These arrests are a significant blow to (ISIL) as we continue to remove its leadership and fighters from the battlefield,” Rankine-Galloway said.

ISIL fighters no longer control significant pockets of territory inside Iraq, but do maintain a grip inside Syria along Iraq’s border.

The U.S.-led coalition supported Iraqi ground forces and Syrian fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces in the more than three-year war against ISIL.

After Iraqi forces retook the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIL last summer, Syrian forces on the other side of the border claimed a series of swift victories, but the campaign was stalled recently when Turkey launched a cross-border raid into Syria’s north.

Earlier this month the coalition announced a drive to clear the final pockets of ISIL territory inside Syria.

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted about the anti-ISIL raid Thursday, saying those arrested were the “five most wanted” ISIL “leaders.” It was unclear what criteria, if any, Trump was using to describe the ISIL operatives as the “five most wanted.”

A U.S. national security official said there were no indications that the operation had captured Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIL who has long been the coalition’s top target. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the targets publicly and requested anonymity.

Last year the Pentagon said that there were “some indicators” that al-Baghdadi was still alive a month after Russia claimed to have killed him in a strike near the Syrian city of Raqqa.

None of the statements released Thursday from the president or the coalition named the ISIL fighters arrested.

ISIL fighters swept into Iraq in the summer of 2014, taking control of nearly a third of the country. At the height of the group’s power their self-proclaimed caliphate stretched from the edges of Aleppo in Syria to just north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Now, with the group’s physical caliphate largely destroyed, anti-ISIL operations are increasingly focused on targeting the extremists’ remaining leadership.

— Lederman reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report</s>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday that five of the “most wanted” ISIS leaders have been captured.

Spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve Army Col. Ryan Dillon tweeted on Thursday that Iraq captured five key ISIS leaders as part of Operation Roundup. The tweet did not specify when or where the five were captured, nor give any names.

Dillon’s tweet said the capture was a coordinated operation between Iraqi and the US backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

We will update this developing story as we learn more.</s>President Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that five of the most wanted Islamic State group leaders have been captured, adding to what many in the media noted has been a strong week of accomplishment for his administration.

The New York Times reported, “Five senior Islamic State officials have been captured, including a top aide to the group’s leader, in a complex cross-border sting carried out by Iraqi and American intelligence, two Iraqi officials said Wednesday.”

According to The Times, the capture of the Islamic State leaders, which was part of a three month sting operation “represents a significant intelligence victory for the American-led coalition fighting the extremist group and underscores the strengthening relationship between Washington and Baghdad.”

Two Iraqi officials said those captured include four Iraqis and one Syrian and their responsibilities included governing the Islamic State group’s territory around the town of Deir ez-Zor, near the Iraq-Syria border.

Reuters reported the sting operation was precipitated by the February capture of Ismail al-Eithawi, a top aide to Islamic state leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“Iraqi agents then used the Telegram messaging app on his mobile phone to lure four commanders from the group to cross the border from Syria into Iraq and into a trap,” Iraqi government security adviser Hisham al-Hashimi told Reuters.

Hashimi said the operation was carried out in cooperation with U.S. forces. The United States is leading a coalition of nations fighting Islamic State fighters on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.

The security adviser added that Iraqi and American intelligence agents were able to uncover banks accounts and secret communication codes used by the terrorist group as a result of the sting operation.

Baghdadi — who declared himself the ruler of the Islamic State following the capture of Mosul in northern Iraq in 2014 — is believed to be near the border region between Iraq and Syria.

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces retook Mosul — the last major Iraqi city held by the Islamic State — in July 2017, just six months into Trump’s presidency.

Reuters reported that the Islamic State group has now lost all the cities and towns that once made up its so-called caliphate.

“The noose is tightening around him,” Hashimi said, referring to Baghdadi.

Many took to social media to celebrate the good news Trump has received this week.

The president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. wrote that it had been an “impressive” last 12 hours.

Even The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, a fierce Trump critic, had to concede events have been going the president’s way.

Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro suggested Trump’s decision making is not too difficult to comprehend.

“Trump having himself an amazing week. As always, all he had to do was think ‘What Would Obama Do?’ And then do the opposite,” Shapiro wrote.

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below.</s>Donald Trump said on Thursday that five “most wanted” leaders of the Islamic State militant group had been captured, an apparent reference to the capture of five commanders of the militant group by Iraq.

“Five Most Wanted leaders of ISIS just captured!” Trump wrote on Twitter, providing no further details.

Iraq had described the capture of the Isis commanders as “some of the most wanted” leaders of the group. The list did not include Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. 



Earlier on Thursday, the New York Times reported that five senior Isis members including an aide to Baghdadi had been captured following a three-month operation carried out by Iraqi and US intelligence agencies. 



The operation tracked senior Isis leaders who had been in hiding in Syria and Turkey, the report said.
President of the United States Donald Trump announces that five senior leaders of ISIL were captured in a joint operation involving US and Iraqi forces.