Five years ago Scott Brown was busy hosting backyard barbeques for Republican presidential primary candidates as they traipsed through New Hampshire. Now, after a four-year run as former President Donald Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand, Scott Brown is talking more like, well, a diplomat.
“I’m kind of disgusted with politics and hopeful we can tone down the rhetoric,” Brown said during an appearance Friday afternoon on Bloomberg Baystate Business.
Brown is back from the South Pacific and settling into his new job as president and dean of New England Law School in Boston’s Theater’s District. The former state senator and U.S. senator said being ambassador was “the most exhilarating job I ever had,” but he called his new role at the law school “just as exciting.”
Brown resisted talking too much about his former boss, President Trump. He called the attack at the Capitol “outrageous and disgusting,” but he wouldn’t say whether Trump bore responsibility or if he would vote to convict Trump on the article of impeachment passed by the House if he still served in the Senate.
“I’m not going to comment. I’m going to leave that to the pundits, which I am not,” Brown said.
Instead, Brown said his message for students at New England Law and others is that it’s time for leaders to work together. Asked lessons he could offer from New Zealand’s success in controlling COVID-19, Brown said, “The lessons are that we need to be patient and we need to work together and we need to tone down the rhetoric and the distrust and we need to find a way to be courteous and kind to our friends and neighbors.”
He added, “If someone wants you to wear a mask because they feel feeble or they feel vulnerable, well, darn it, wear the stupid mask.”
Scott Brown. State House News Service photo. 
