Following the May 15 Fox News-sponsored Republican presidential debate, several news outlets reported former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's attack on Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), in which he asserted that Clinton, “with regard to taxes,” “said ... that we have to take money from you in order to give it to the common good.” But these outlets did not report that, when she made the comments, Clinton was talking about President Bush's tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the wealthy, and her support for repealing some of them. She made her comments before an audience at a fundraiser that consisted of people she described as “well enough off that ... the [Bush administration] tax cuts may have helped” them.

On June 29, 2004, the Associated Press reported Clinton's comments as follows:

Headlining an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer [CA], who is up for re-election this year, Hillary Clinton told several hundred supporters -- some of whom had ponied up as much as $10,000 to attend -- to expect to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control of Congress.

“Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you,” Sen. Clinton said. “We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

But reports of Giuliani's attack left out the context of Clinton's comments. During a report on the May 16 edition of the CBS Evening News, CBS News senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield aired a clip of Giuliani's attack without offering any context. Similarly, on the same day's edition of CBS' The Early Show, while discussing Giuliani's debate performance with Greenfield, anchor Harry Smith aired Giuliani's attack on Clinton, but neither provided context of Clinton's comments. Additionally, a May 16 New York Post article by reporter Carl Campanile and a USA Today op-ed by Gannett News Service political writer Chuck Raasch ignored the context of Clinton's 2004 statement.

Prior to his attack on Clinton regarding taxes, Giuliani asserted that Clinton “agreed with” the statement, "[T]he unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America." Although The Early Show report, the New York Post article, and Raasch's op-ed uncritically repeated Giuliani's claim, the claim misrepresented what Clinton said, as Media Matters for America noted. A May 16 Bloomberg report noted: “In a 1996 C-Span interview, Clinton said she agreed with a quote she cited [sic] her book, 'It Takes a Village,' that 'The unfettered free market has been the most radically disruptive force in American life in the last generation.' Clinton also said in the interview 'that the market is the driving force behind our prosperity,' 'but that it cannot be permitted just to run roughshod over people's lives as well.' "

From the May 16 edition of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric:

GREENFIELD: But it was left to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to turn a question about social issues into the invocation of the Republicans' number one target.

GIULIANI: She's also said, with regard to taxes, that we have to take money from you in order to give it to the common good. Republicans should be uniting to make certain that what the liberal media is talking about -- our inevitable defeat -- doesn't happen.

[end video clip]

GREENFIELD: Giuliani's not so subtle message? “Whatever our disagreements,” he's saying, “you need me to beat your real enemy.” That message was aimed squarely at the constituency that Reverend [Jerry] Falwell helped bring to a dominant position in the Republican Party. Jeff Greenfield, CBS News, New York.

From the May 16 edition of CBS' The Early Show:

SMITH: First, I want to talk about Rudy Giuliani. As Jim [Axelrod, co-anchor] was talking about, at the last debate, he was trying to straddle the fence on abortion -- that came up clearly in the debate last night. Let's listen to his response.

GIULIANI [video clip]: We're looking at a race here in which the leading Democratic candidate for president of the United States has said that “the unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America.” That's a quote -- or that's a quote she agreed with. She's also said, with regard to taxes, that we have to take money from you in order to give it to the common good.

SMITH: So one of the things that Rudy's tried to do last night was to differentiate him especially from the Democrats. Jeff, why was that important?

GREENFIELD: No, this was a very significant moment because it is the key to Rudy Giuliani's statement about, believe it or not, abortion, to the social conservatives. He's saying, “Look, you may not agree with me -- we have differences -- but you really don't like Hillary Clinton.” For a lot of Republicans, she is Lady Macbeth. “And I'm the one who can challenge her in relatively moderate liberal states like New York and California, so you need to get over this distinction.” That's why he brought Hillary Clinton in on taxes on an answer that was supposed to be about abortion.

From the May 16 New York Post article:

Earlier, he [Giuliani] deflected a question about ... his liberal positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights -- and why he backed liberal Democrat Mario Cuomo for governor in 1994 -- by attacking Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton as a backer of big government.

“We're looking at a race in which the leading Democratic candidate for president of the United States has said that the unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America,” Giuliani said.

“She also said, with regard to taxes, that we have to take money from you in order to give it to the common good,” he said.

When pressed, Giuliani defended his pro-choice position on abortion.

From Raasch's May 16 op-ed in USA Today:

Giuliani threw out the political equivalent of a bullfighter's red cape to a Republican audience: the possibility of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

“There's something really big at stake here,” Giuliani said. “We're looking at a race here in which the leading candidate for president of the United States (Clinton) has said that the unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America. ... She's also said, with regard to taxes, that we have to take money from you in order to give it to the common good.”

Republicans, Giuliani pleaded, “should be uniting to make certain that what the liberal media is talking about, our inevitable defeat, doesn't happen.”