U.S. Ambassador New Zealand Scott Brown said Wednesday he thinks political motivations might be behind recent complaints that he was culturally insensitive to a waitress and other guests at a Peace Corps function in Samoa.
“At this event there were a lot of people that didn’t like [President Trump]. Sadly, it’s politics and it is what it is,” the new U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa told local media.
Brown reportedly told a female server at the function she would make hundreds of dollars as a waitress in the U.S. and said to other guests that they looked “beautiful” as they arrived.
But Brown, a former U.S. senator for Massachusetts who has been in his new post since June, said he would heed advice he was given as a result of an official department inquiry into his behavior.
“I was told that, ‘You know, listen, you’re not Scott Brown from Ryan, New Hampshire, anymore, you’re an ambassador and you have to be culturally aware of different cultures and different sensitivities.’ And I’m always welcoming that kind of advice,” he said.
Brown’s wife Gail Huff-Brown, who was present at the event, said the complaints had come as a shock to the couple.
“One of the things Scott and I have noticed since we’ve been here — we speak English, New Zealanders speak English, but a lot of things we say and a lot of things Kiwis say to us we misunderstand,” Huff-Brown said. “This has been a real learning curve for us.”
