Wendy Davis is taking her campaign insisting her life story is true to Spanish-language media. Davis appeared on Univisión’s Sunday morning news show Al Punto to discredit the reports claiming she lied about her life story, calling them “really absurd” and saying she felt “insulted” on behalf of other single mothers.
Davis sat down with host Jorge Ramos to discuss the Dallas Morning News story unraveling some mistruths about her life story. She first addressed the claim that she was a “single teen mother”–a claim since debunked, since Davis divorced at age 21. She suggested that she felt like a single mother “the moment when [I] became the sole caregiver,” and that is when “the marriage is over,” so “in reality” she was single at 19 despite not being divorced. She added that she was the “sole caregiver” for her daughter for four and a half years and lived in poverty for many of those.
Ramos questioned her education story, as well, noting that the Dallas Morning News story found that Davis did not work her way through law school but relied on her husband for student loan payments. Davis claimed that the two “jointly” took out a loan, in part due to the fact that she lost a scholarship to community college when she got married. “My husband,” she explained, “picked up where that left off.”
Any claim that she had lied, she reiterated, was “really absurd”: “I am a young woman who had lived in poverty, and worked and pulled myself out of that place.” She once again blamed her likely Republican opponent, Greg Abbott, for the news story, despite no evidence finding that Abbott or his team were involved in the publication of the report. “Greg Abbott and his team are trying to take my story away from me,” she told Ramos, “but they will never be able to.”
Ramos ended the conversation with a bit of a softball, noting that Politico had called her “the most judged woman in America” and asking, “Do you feel that way?” Davis replied that she was a “strong Texas woman” that could handle it, but said, “I feel insulted on behalf of women like me who are working really hard to make improvements in their lives and whose paths are being judged.”
The interview initially ran on Ramos’ English-language show on Fusion TV, America, earlier this week. The Al Punto interview was in Spanish, but you can watch the undubbed English version below: