NEW YORK—Bemoaning the paper’s recent series focusing on the role slavery played in American history, Newt Gingrich slammed The New York Times’ 1619 Project Monday as shameless abolitionist propaganda. “What we’re seeing is the tragic decline of The New York Times into a propaganda paper that’s clearly operating in the pocket of pro-abolitionist causes,” said the former House Speaker, noting that the project amounted to an ideological crusade that put the newspaper in the hands of abolitionist radicals like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown. “What happened to giving the public all the information about slavery’s benefits and drawbacks and trusting them to decide? Apparently, that sort of faith in your readers to understand the real consequences of outlawing slavery is something the Times no longer possesses. In fact, if they’re going to be putting out biased nonsense like this, the newspaper’s editors might as well have left-wing lunatics like William Lloyd Garrison writing up their anti-slavery screed for them.” Gingrich added that missteps like this are why these days he gets the majority of his news from outlets like the Atlanta Southern Confederacy.