JD Vance has gone nuclear on CBS for ‘harassing’ his mother-in-law in an effort to poke holes in his politics.
The network had gone to Vance for comment for a story it ran on Wednesday about his mother-in-law Lakshmi Chilukuri.
The headline reads: ‘She advanced DEI at her university. Her son-in-law, Vice President JD Vance, wants to end it nationwide.’
The crux of the story was how Chilukuri had taken strides to DEI at the University of California San Diego, where she works, while her son-in-law is trying to outlaw it in government.
And the Vice President didn’t mince his words when asked by the reporter for a statement.
‘This story exists because CBS has decided that harassing my mother in law is a reasonable price in order to attack President Trump.
‘I don’t like DEI, and I’m proud of what our administration has done on that front.
‘But I love my mother-in-law. If she doesn’t share my views on DEI I suppose I’ll have to do what 99 percent of Americans do when confronted with a family member who doesn’t always agree with them: get over it.
‘I’ll choose instead to focus on her kindness and the fact that she’s an incredible mother and loving grandmother to the most important people in my life.’
JD Vance has gone nuclear on CBS for ‘harassing’ his mother-in-law in an effort to poke holes in his politics
‘I love my mother-in-law,’ Vance said of Lakshmi Chilukuri, who today is the provost of the University of California San Diego’s Sixth College
The network had gone to Vance for comment for a story it ran on Wednesday about his mother-in-law Lakshmi Chilukuri
Chilukuri has worked for the UCSD for more than 20 years.
She was named the school’s provost in 2018, and has helped create its pilot course on race, ethnicity and gender in biology and medicine.
The CBS piece forensically analyzed her DEI work.
It also discussed how Chilukuri served on the university’s biological sciences diversity committee, after moving to the states from India with her husband Radhakrishna ‘Krish’ Chilukuri.
That was in the late 70s, after which she gave birth to daughter Usha – the US’s first Indian-American second lady – in 1986.
Usha met her future husband two decades later while attending Yale Law. The pair wed in 2014.
Chilukuri, in the meantime, was rising steadily through the ranks at her own place of work.
Vance with his wife, Usha. The pair married in 2014 and have three children
In a letter to prospective students, she emphasized the school’s ‘steadfast adherence to principles that drive equity, inclusion, and an embrace of diversity’.
‘As we come into the new academic year with the pandemic not quite yet in the rearview mirror, with issues of equity and systemic racism, anti-Blackness and anti-Asian racism yet unresolved, we have before us both opportunity and responsibility,’ Chilukuri wrote at the time.
The piece also pointed to the university’s penchant for diversity efforts as seen on its website, and Chilukuri’s high place within the school’s faculty.
Vance and his disdain for DEI was mentioned in what felt like the same breath, as well as his and President Trump calls to end ‘wokeness’.
The story asserted such stances have become ‘a hallmark of their administration’s first weeks’.
UCSD’s endowment is more than $1.4 billion, per the UC San Diego Foundation’s website – putting it in the president’s prospective crosshairs.
Earlier this week, Trump threatened to revisit the grants of Ivy League schools and elite institutions that are seen to support antisemitism.
It’s unclear if UCSD will be one of them.
Vance has spoken fondly of his mother-in-law in the past.
She moved in with him to care for his then newborn son, Vivek, in 2020, taking a year away from her career to do so.
‘You can sort of see the effect it has on him to be around them, like they spoil him and sort of all the classic stuff that grandparents do to grandchildren.
‘It makes him a much better human being to have exposure to his grandparents, and the evidence on this, by the way, is like super clear,’ he said.
Vance, meanwhile, is poised to travel to his wife and mother-in-law’s homeland later this month