LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — Everton has engaged in “positive conversations” with John Textor in relation to the American businessman's potential purchase of the club, the English team said on Thursday.
Textor, a 58-year-old digital media and entertainment entrepreneur, said last month he wanted to sell his stake in Crystal Palace — one of the many teams under his ownership — so that he can purchase Premier League rival Everton.
“While positive conversations and progress continues to be made with Mr. Textor to formalize any deal with him, there remains some work to be done to complete the transaction,” Everton said in a statement.
Everton was moved to comment on the talks after Textor gave an interview with Sky Sports News in Britain on Wednesday, saying he is confident everything could be completed before his exclusivity agreement with the club expires on Nov. 30.
“Nobody wakes up and thinks, ‘I get to buy Everton,'” Textor said. “But if you decide football is what you want in your life and then somebody comes along and asks you if you want to become the owner of Everton, it’s like someone asking you if you want to be president of the United States. Of course you do.”
In the interview with Sky Sports News, Textor denied he has held any talks with prospective candidates to replace Everton manager Sean Dyche and also said he would prefer not to leave Goodison Park to move to a new home at Bramley-Moore Dock, even though he recognizes the financial opportunities the new stadium offers.
“The comments made by Mr. Textor merely represent his personal view on club matters,” Everton said in its statement.
“Everyone at the club is staying focused on providing the best support possible to Sean and the squad as we head into the weekend’s fixture (at Aston Villa in the Premier League).”
Textor’s Eagle Football company is the latest party to be granted a period of exclusivity about taking over Everton, after the club’s previous talks with 777 Partners and the Friedkin Group fell through.
Textor also owns teams in Belgium ( RWD Molenbeek ), Brazil (Botafogo) and France (Lyon) as part of his multi-club model that is becoming more common in soccer.
Textor cannot have a stake in two Premier League clubs at the same time, so would have to sell his Palace shares before purchasing Everton.
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Everton's Michael Keane celebrates scoring during the English Premier League soccer match between Everton and Bournemouth at Goodison Park, Liverpool, England, Saturday Aug. 31, 2024. (Peter Byrne/PA via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Vice President Kamala Harris struck a measured tone, even steering clear of mentioning Donald Trump by name Tuesday in an interview with Black journalists that starkly contrasted with the former president's own, highly contentious, recent appearance before the same group.
The session with the National Association of Black Journalists was one of the few extensive sit-down interviews Harris has done since replacing President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket in July. She repeatedly criticized Trump on issues including his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and opposition to abortion access, but was careful to refer to him as the former president and in other ways that avoided naming him directly.
Trump was ramping up his campaigning, too, after the presidential race was roiled by Sunday’s second apparent assassination attempt against him.
The former president was holding an evening town hall in Flint, Michigan, and has appearances later in the week in New York, Washington and North Carolina. Trump re-upped his past retaliation threats against election workers, donors and others as he tries to stoke fears about the integrity of the upcoming 2024 election.
He posted Tuesday on his social media site, “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before.”
Harris has her own stops in Washington, as well as Michigan and Wisconsin in coming days, with the two candidates overlapping in concentrating on the industrial Midwest and Pennsylvania and North Carolina — all swing areas that could decide an election expected to be exceedingly close.
Harris answered questions from three association journalists at a small, relatively quiet venue at the Philadelphia studios of public radio station WHYY. That was very different from Trump's addressing the NABJ conference in Chicago in July, when he was antagonistic to the moderators and sparked an uproar by questioning the vice president’s racial identity.
Her manner was a departure from her campaign rallies, where Harris often receives some of her loudest applause by declaring that her professional background as a prosecutor means, “I know Donald Trump's type.”
Pressed about reports of eroding support among Black male voters, Harris said she wasn't “assuming I’m gonna have it because I’m Black.” She ducked a question about whether she'd support efforts by some congressional Democrats for reparations from the government to compensate descendants of slaves for years of unpaid labor by their ancestors.
Biden has backed the idea of at least studying reparations.
As for Sunday's arrest at Trump's Florida golf course, she said she reached him by phone, checking in "to see if he’s OK.”
“I told him what I have said publicly, there’s no place for political violence in our country,” the vice president said. The White House described the conversation as cordial and brief.
In an earlier interview released Tuesday, the vice president told Spanish-language radio host Chiquibaby, “Like all Americans, I’m grateful" Trump was unharmed.
The former president has claimed, without evidence, that months of criticism against him by Harris and Biden inspired the latest attack. That's despite Trump's own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and advocacy for jailing or prosecuting his political enemies.
So far, Biden and Harris have tried to avoid politics in their responses to Sunday's incident, instead condemning political violence of all kinds. The president also urged Congress to increase funding to the Secret Service.
Authorities say Ryan Wesley Routh camped outside the golf course in West Palm Beach, where Trump was playing on Sunday, for nearly 12 hours with food and a rifle but fled without firing shots when a Secret Service agent spotted and shot at him.
Subsequently arrested, Routh’s past online posts suggest he has not been consistent about his politics in terms of supporting Democrats or Republicans. The attack came barely two months after Trump was wounded during a rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, said at a Georgia Faith & Freedom Coalition event that “it’s popular on a lot of corners of the left to say that we have a both sides problem.” But “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump."
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during her briefing with reporters Tuesday that there should be zero tolerance for violence-inciting rhetoric. She bristled at the suggestion that Biden and Harris have stoked division by calling Trump a threat to democracy, saying that there were concrete examples of the former president being that — such as when he helped incite an attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In response to Vance's comments, Jean-Pierre said, “When you have that type of language out there it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because people look up to that particular national leader, and they listen to you." She said such comments open the door for "people to take you very seriously.”
Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Matt Brown in Philadelphia and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Phoenix Awards Dinner in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Phoenix Awards Dinner in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives at Harry Reid International Airport to board a plane after a campaign trip, Saturday, Sept.14, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
