Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora took issue with President Trump's comments about the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, a storm which ravaged Cora's native Puerto Rico.
"It's disrespectful," Cora said Thursday. "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. We still... you see the hurricanes forming now. Everybody's panicking. It's not easy. One thing's for sure, and I told [the media] before, one thing I'm proud, we're standing up on our own two feet. Like, do we need help? Yeah, we do. We know that."
With Hurricane Florence bearing down on the Carolinas, Trump took to Twitter to defend his handling of Hurricane Maria. He disputed the approximate death toll of 3,000 people on the Caribbean Island last year, claiming that there were six to 18 deaths after the storm.
"This was done by Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising billions of dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico," Trump tweeted. "If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!"
"I hate that people make it a political issue," Cora said. "This is about human beings. The people that went through this, they know what happened."
A study completed by George Washington University backs up the government of Puerto Rico's numbers, that 2,975 people died as a result of the Category 4 hurricane.
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Cora went to Puerto Rico in January with a Red Sox delegation that included catcher Christian Vazquez, also a native of the island, to distribute aid.
Cora is in his first year as manager of the Red Sox, which own the best record in Major League Baseball at 101-46 through Thursday. It's the franchise's first 100-win season since 1946.
