Good evening from the newsroom. Keep it I'm honest tonight. Backlash is growing to President Trump's so-called anti-weaponization fund, and a critical piece of it is coming from Republican lawmakers, one of whom today called it, quote, stupid on stilts. The opposition was strong enough to derail Senate legislation to pay for the president's immigration crackdown. It's a bill he says he wants on his desk to sign by June 1st.

Now it appears that Republican senators may not even be able to muster the votes to pass

it because of how toxic the nearly $1.8 billion fund has become.

A closed-door meeting with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche apparently did not help

matter as much.

Sources described it as tense, saying hardly any members spoke up to defend the fund.

When asked whether the Acting Attorney General had convinced her to support it,

Maine Senator Susan Collins said simply no.

Going into the meeting, North Carolina's Tom Tillis said much more.

What do you want to hear from Todd Blanche today? About the payout pot for punks? Not a lot. Look, under what circumstances would it ever

make sense to provide restitution for people who were either pled guilty or were found guilty

in a court of law? You want to talk about maybe providing restitution for people

who weren't found guilty? Fine. But if you do this, why not for the poor, mostly peaceful

protesters in Kenosha in Portland? I mean, my God, do you see where this would head? These people

don't deserve restitution. Many of them deserve to be in prison. Some of them deserve the

pardon because they were over prosecuted. But this is, I mean, this is just stupid on stilts.

Stupid on stilts and his other one was payout pot for punks. Senator Tillis is retiring soon

and speaking more plainly now than he might have otherwise.

So is former Republican leader Mitch McConnell who put out a statement tonight which reads,

So the nation's top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops.

Utterly stupid, morally wrong, take your pick.

You don't have to take their word on whether violent felons will be eligible

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