Retired Marine Corps fighter pilot Amy McGrath went on national television Tuesday to announce her bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and promptly fired a Sidewinder missile into her own foot.

The problem? The Democrat and former Marine, known as Krusty in her flying days, said in the interview that McConnell doesn't help Donald Trump enough.

"If you think about why Kentuckians voted for Trump, they wanted to drain the swamp, and Trump said that he was going to do that," McGrath said during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Trump promised to bring back jobs. He promised to lower drug prices for so many Kentuckians. And that is very important.

"And you know what? Who stops them along the way? Who stops the president from doing these things? Mitch McConnell. And I think that that’s very important, and that’s going to be my message — the things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done. He’s not able to get it done because of Sen. McConnell."

Whoa!

What in the Sam Hill is Krusty talking about?

Kentucky makeover:McGrath challenges McConnell as a pro-Trump Democrat

McConnell has been Trump's chief enabler since Trump became the Republican nominee, often refusing to call him out in no uncertain terms when the president has erred.

He has given Trump what he has wanted, approving unqualified cabinet secretary after unqualified cabinet secretary as long as Trump picks the appellate court and Supreme Court nominees McConnell wants.

By Wednesday, McGrath had better refined her message when she sat down in a midday interview with the Courier Journal and made it clear that she doesn't plan to vote for Trump in 2020, that his coddling of dictators bothers her and that his separating children from their parents at the U.S. border with Mexico is "immoral."

She said, however, that she agrees with Trump on a couple of populist issues — that the federal government should take action to reduce prescription medication prices and to improve the nation's infrastructure, including access to broadband internet.

And that McConnell — the guy who decides what legislation moves and what legislation doesn't — hasn't lifted a finger on those important issues.

McGrath said she agreed with Trump's promise to drain the swamp in Washington.

There ain't no bigger, meaner, uglier, toothier alligator lurking around the Potomac River than McConnell, as far as Democrats are concerned.

And judging by McConnell's poll numbers in Kentucky, there are a lot of Trump supporters here who agree with them.

It's unfathomable that you could drain a swamp and leave a cold-blooded reptile like McConnell splashing around the Tidal Basin and preying on anyone who dares approach him without a high-paid lobbyist to mollify the senior senator by stroking his belly with stacks of Benjamins.

Read more:McGrath's campaign brings in record money in first 24 hours

While McGrath's statement on Tuesday caused a minor crisis for her, with social media denizens ranting and raving that Kentucky Democrats don't want a Trump supporter as their candidate, it certainly didn't hurt her fundraising.

In her first 24 hours in the race, McGrath pulled in $2.5 million. That's more than Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper raised in the entire first quarter for their presidential bids.

While she was clawing in the cash, McConnell's hatchlings were spreading out on Twitter to attack.

"It took 12 hours & a national media tour for @AmyMcGrathKY to prove to an entire nation that she's a complete and total fraud willing to do and say whatever it takes to get some donor $ and win some votes. #KYSen," tweeted Jake Cox, a Kentucky Republican political operative.

"Gotta say it again: McGrath's problem isn't her obvious hard-left agenda - it's that she's a phony. And not a very skilled one," tweeted Steven Law, a former aide who ran McConnell's first reelection campaign.

It will get worse as McConnell picks apart every utterance, every tweet, every public thought she's ever had.

"I fully recognized how difficult this race would be and the history behind folks who have gone up against Sen. McConnell, but I felt like this was something that we had to take on," McGrath said in the Courier Journal interview.

"Part of the problem with politics is that we don't have people that want to get in the fray, and we don't have people that want to get in the fray because of guys like Sen. McConnell, who for 35 years, he essentially invented negative campaigning," McGrath said.

Amy McGrath:'If President Trump has good ideas, I'll be for them'

Nonetheless, she says the race can be won.

That's what other Democrats who tried to knock off McConnell have said. It's what former Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane thought in 1990. It's what Steve Beshear believed in 1996. That's exactly what Lois Combs Weinberg told herself in 2002. And it's what Bruce Lunsford convinced himself of in 2008.

It was a certainly in the mind of Alison Lundergan Grimes, who fell to McConnell by 15 percentage points in 2014 after she refused to even say if she voted for Barack Obama.

McGrath seemed to be making that same mistake on Tuesday morning when she painted a picture of herself as a Trump Democrat. She turned it around on Wednesday with a much more plausible position.

The question is, can she convince Trump voters that the president will never drain the swamp as long as the biggest, meanest, ugliest, toothiest alligator lurks around the Potomac River?

It's unlikely in a state that has turned increasingly red, but the only chance she has if she keeps her Sidewinders trained on the swamp and not her own foot.

Joseph Gerth's opinion column runs on most Sundays and at various times throughout the week. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/josephg.