Republicans are rushing to retire in part because 'they hate' having to defend Trump's tweets: WaPo reporter

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) on Monday announced that he would not be running for Congress again in 2020, making him the 17th House Republican to announce his retirement within the last year alone.

While there are several reasons for all these retirements, Washington Post reporter Rachel Bade told CNN's John King that one reason is the sheer exhaustion of having to constantly defend President Donald Trump.

"You can't overstate how much Republicans hate having to answer for the president's controversial tweets," she explained.

Bade then said that Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-MI) told her that he decided to hang it up after the president delivered racist attacks on Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) over the summer.

"One of the tweets that led him to retire was when Trump went out and made a racist comment about those four liberal women in the House, saying they should go back to their countries of origin, even though they're all Americans," she said. "That was what led him to go home, have a conversation with his wife and say, 'Enough is enough, I'm done.'"

Watch the video below.