I sat at this table and I wrote a letter to my senator telling him I wanted to fly fighter jets in combat to fight for my country and that women should be able to do that. He never wrote back. That senator that didn't write back was Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the letter writer is his likely 2020 Democratic challenger Amy McGraft, a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel and one of the first women to fly a combat mission in the FAA 18 fighter jet. She's going to run to unseat McConnell in Kentucky to stay he served for more than three decades. McGraft lost a close race for the House last year but proved to be a prolific fundraiser. She was recruited to run for this seat by Chuck Schumer and others. Amy McGraft joins me now. Lieutenant Colonel, thanks for joining us. I guess the first question I have is President Trump won Kentucky by 30 points in 2016. He's going to be on the top of the ticket. Next year you lost a House race in a Democratic wave season. You came close but you didn't get across the finish line. What makes you think you can be McConnell and what will probably be a more difficult environment? Well, you're right to say that Senator McConnell is a very formidable foe. I think if you think about why Kentucky is voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, bring back jobs, do big things and if it's not. Do things like bring down drug prices and a lot of these things are being halted by Senator McConnell. For example, drug prices. President Trump has said this is his priority. He said the current system is very, very unfair and this is important for Kentucky. Kentucky has the second highest per capita spending on prescription drug medication over $2,000 a year. Who's stopping President Trump from doing this? Senator McConnell because he's bought off by Big Pharma. I mean, he gets $1.2 million in campaign cash and his last election. It's not rocket science. This is what's happening and a lot of Kentuckians know this. So this pitch that you're saying right now, which you said earlier today, prompted the Louisville Courier Journal, one of your home state papers, to say that you seem to be casting yourself as a pro-Trump Democrat in ways. The saying McConnell's the reason that a lot of things Trump promised to Kentuckians hasn't happened. Is that a fair depiction? You know, I would say that I understand why the voters in Kentucky voted for Donald Trump. They are tired of the swamp. They are tired of the dysfunction. Frankly, voters in Kentucky really don't like both political parties. They think that's part of the problem. And folks like Senator McConnell who have been around for 34 years are not the answer. And I think many Kentuckians are seeing that. And that was a lot of the appeal of Donald Trump. He was an outsider. And so I think that's what I'm trying to say. I'm an outsider too. I'm not someone who ever believed I was going to be a politician. Jake, I just wanted to serve my country. I had this dream. I wanted to fly fighter jets and that's what I did. And along the way, I met my husband and Navy pilot. We got married. We have three kids and it's amazing. We both looked at each other over the last three years, like many Americans and many Kentuckians. And we've said, you know, hey, we need better leaders in this country. And there's no better example of that than in Kentucky. So I can understand certainly why you're talking about how you understand why Kentuckians voted for Donald Trump in such overwhelming numbers. But it has been pointed out that you once compared the feeling you had when President Trump was elected to the feeling you had on 9-11. Won't that undermine the pitch, you think? Well, what I was talking about was the fact that, you know, nobody really expected President Trump to win. And I was talking also about the entire 2016 cycle. You know, many of us were spurred into action by what happened in 2016, the labeling of each other as they're all communist or they're all this or they're all that. And the fake news, the divisiveness of our country was something I had never seen before. You know, my husband is a Republican. I'm a Democrat. We took stock of that after the election and we said, you know, where are we as a country? And that way it was the same thing for me was looking at that tragic event in taking stock of where are we as a country. So that's what I was saying. And I can see why, you know, folks might be upset about that. But that's what I was saying. All right, Lieutenant Colonel Amy McGrath, we thank you for your service. A good luck out there on the campaign trail. Great to have you.