Red Sox manager Alex Cora insists he has nothing against Donald Trump – despite skipping a meeting with the then-president after Boston’s World Series win in 2018.
The MLB giants visited the White House in May 2019, a few months after beating the Dodgers to win baseball’s biggest prize.
Cora missed the trip and this week the Puerto Rican finally opened up about his controversial decision.
His homeland was still recovering from Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island back in 2017. It was ‘the strongest hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in almost a century’, with the official death count raised to 2,975 in 2018.
The Red Sox manager revealed that he would not have felt ‘comfortable’ celebrating while his people ‘suffered’.
‘It’s not that I regret (it), but I think I should’ve been more clear — it was a visit to the White House,’ Cora told ‘The Mayor’s Office’ podcast.
‘I have nothing against the President at that moment. It was Donald Trump at that moment, President Trump.
‘But I felt me celebrating something at that stage, while [Puerto Ricans] were still suffering, it was bad. I didn’t feel comfortable doing it.
Cora insists there was nothing political about his decision, despite previously claiming that ‘we still have a long way to go’ when it came to the US government’s response to the hurricane.
‘We are part of the United States,’ he continued. ‘What they do for us is amazing — the funding, all of that — but there was still work to do.
‘And I felt very awkward, like “let’s celebrate this at the White House” while a lot of people suffered here. People took it like politics. No. My thing is sports and my family, right? I regret because I wasn’t clear about it.’
In May 2019, Cora said the US government has done ‘some things back home that are great’ but added that ‘we still have a long ways to go.’
At the time, the Red Sox manager said he would ‘rather not’ attend the White House and ‘just be consistent with everything’.
Trump received backlash over his administration’s relief efforts in Puerto Rico following the hurricane, despite the president-elect claiming in September 2018 that his response was ‘tremendous’.
