Red Sox Manager Calls Trump’s Puerto Rico Tweets “Disrespectful”

The manager of the best team in baseball is calling foul on tweets by President Trump.

Following Trump’s tweets Thursday disputing the number of people who died as a result of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year, Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora spoke on it.

The 42-year-old manager, a native of the island, was in Puerto Rico in January with the Red Sox to distribute aid.

“The one thing for sure, the Red Sox helped. The Cubs, the Pirates, the Houston Astros. There’s a lot of people in the states (and) they’re still helping us,” Cora said. “To be tweeting about 3,000 people and be efficient, it’s actually disrespectful for my country. We see it that way. I know probably he doesn’t feel that way. And like I said, hey man, thank you for helping us. He went down there, he did what he did. I hate talking about politics and all that, but I think this is more than politics. This is about a country that really suffered.”

Earlier in the day, President Trump tweeted: “When I left the Island after the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000.”

After the tweet, George Washington University – the entity that conducted the study which determined the death toll – released a statement saying it stood by its findings. “Our results show that Hurricane Maria was a very deadly storm, one that affected the entire island but hit the poor and the elderly the hardest,” it read. “We are confident that the number — 2,975 — is the most accurate and unbiased estimate of excess mortality to date.”

For his part, Cora is optimistic things in Puerto Rico will be back to normal soon, regardless of what the president has to say.

“We’re not where we were. But we will be there,” he said. “And it’s just a matter of time. But you know it’s a little bit kind of like frustrating that the topic keeps coming and coming and coming. What’s the point, honestly? And I respect him. He’s the president of the United States. But I don’t agree with a lot of stuff that he says about us.”