In a bold response, Vice President JD Vance has taken a stand against CBS News for targeting his family in their latest attempt to tarnish President Donald Trump and his administration’s firm stance against woke policies. On Wednesday, Vance accused the left-leaning network of sinking to new depths by cornering his mother-in-law, Lakshmi Chilukuri, in their pursuit of a narrative against the Trump administration.
According to a report by Fox News, CBS tried to portray Vance in a negative light by digging into Chilukuri’s past involvement with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies—policies that the Trump-Vance administration has actively dismantled.
In its hit piece titled “She advanced DEI at her university. Her son-in-law, Vice President JD Vance, wants to end it nationwide,” CBS reporters Graham Kates and Daniel Klaidman focused on Chilukuri, the provost at UC San Diego’s Sixth College and mother of Second Lady Usha Vance, attempting to brand her as a DEI advocate.
The article emphasized her contributions to a course on “race, ethnicity, and gender in biology and medicine,” participation in the university’s diversity committee, and her so-called pride in promoting progressive ideology. The underlying message was clear: Vance was being labeled a hypocrite for opposing DEI while his mother-in-law supposedly championed it.
But Vance wasn’t going to let this character attack pass unchecked.
“I don’t like DEI, and I’m proud of what our administration has done on that front,” Vance stated to CBS upon inquiry. “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,” he added. “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.”
Vance didn’t hold back in criticizing CBS’s methods: “This story exists because CBS has decided that harassing my mother-in-law is a reasonable price in order to attack President Trump.”
Meanwhile, CBS’s own duplicity is glaring. This is the same network embroiled in a $20 billion lawsuit from Trump for election meddling over its dubious “60 Minutes” editing of Kamala Harris’s interview just days before the election—a move widely seen as a desperate attempt to salvage a struggling Democratic campaign.
Now, they’re lowering themselves further by dragging Vance’s family into their political games.
