Red Sox manager Alex Cora, a Puerto Rico native, addressed the state of Puerto Rico's recovery from Hurricane Maria after President Donald Trump earlier Thursday commented on the island's recovery.
Question: The president had some Tweets today about Puerto Rico. Did you see them, and as we approach the anniversary — ?
“I did. The timing, I thought he was going to mention something in a few days, Sept. 16 [the day the National Weather Service officially named it Maria]. Now that he got ahead of himself. You know, 3,000, six, 18. I don’t know. We will never know how many, how many we lost. I hate that people that make it a political issue. This is about human beings. The people that went through this, they know what happened. You know, we have, our population, 19 percent of our population are elderly. It’s old people, just put it that way. And the effect of Sept. 16, the rain, and the winds and whatever happens, maybe 18 people died. But the aftereffects, people don’t talk about that. And when you don’t have food, you don’t have water, no communication, no medicine, then this happened.
"And one thing for sure, we — the government helped. We do feel that they helped us. I don’t know if it was efficient, it was enough, I don’t know. 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 that they’re still helping us. 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, we still, you see the hurricanes forming now. Everybody’s panicking. It’s not easy. One thing’s for sure, and I told you guys 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. But we’ve been battling through it. We’re not where we were. But we will be there. 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."
Alex, did you personally know people that suffered there, from a personal point of view?
"Yeah, yeah yeah. I mean, like last year, when Mr. Crane [Astros owner Jim Crane] got that plane, he got us a plane. It was 150 passengers. And like I said, that day was, when I was in the baggage claim, at the airport, and Mr. Crane was right there, I’ve never seen so many people being so grateful of somebody. I mean, there were people that they were sick. Young kids. You know, my kids were there, they were, what, three months old. You know to be able for them to come over, that was like unreal. That’s what it was all about. And Mr. Crane hasn’t even talked about it. We know a lot of people that right now, they’re still suffering. They don’t have a roof. They have a tarp. And there’s people in the country like in the mountains, they have no water. They just found out, there was a military base in a town in the East Coast that they found, I don’t know how many bottles of water. Just in the runway. And it’s been there for six months. And FEMA kind of like fumbled that one, from what I heard. There’s a story after story after story.
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"And you know, it’s been a struggle, but like I said man, hey, we’re better in the last year, obviously. We’re better than yesterday. We keep getting better. And it’s just a matter of time for us to be that enchanted island, like back in the day."