Newly-minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is taking incoming fire from both sides of the political spectrum.

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In the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020, Johnson said Floyd had been murdered — a jury later found that Officer Derek Chauvin had murdered him — and, in an interview with Walter Isaacson, suggested that his adopted black son was treated differently than his biological white son.

Asked what he felt after watching the video of Floyd, Johnson replied:

I was outraged. I don’t think anyone can view the video and objectively come to any other conclusion but that it was an act of murder. {snip}

He expanded on that thought later in the interview:

{snip} And I’ve thought often through all these ordeals over the last couple of weeks about the difference in the experiences between my two 14-year-old sons, Michael being a black American and Jack being white Caucasian. {snip} But the reality is and no one can tell me otherwise, my son Michael had a harder time than my son Jack is going to have simply because of the color of his skin. {snip}

“What should we do about that?” inquired Isaacson.

“I think that we need we really do need systematic change. I think we need transformative solutions,” offered Johnson.

Those comments did not sit well with some on the right.

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh shared the video and captioned it “full clip of the new GOP speaker saying that George Floyd was murdered and we need systemic changes to fix the racism in our country.”

Walsh also characterized Johnson’s comments as a “full fledged endorsement of the Left’s racial narrative.”

“{snip} He went on PBS a week after George Floyd’s overdose and called it an ‘outrage’ and ‘objectively an act of murder,’ and then went on to fully endorse BLM’s talking points and policy prescriptions,” he continued. {snip}

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