Walk­er, not grasp­ing that his pres­i­den­tial aspi­ra­tions mean peo­ple will pay atten­tion to what he says, com­pared the Wis­con­sin protests of 2011 to the Islam­ic State, or ISIS, sur­pris­ing no one with the lev­el of dis­dain he feels for pub­lic employees.

Every gov­er­nor that wants to be pres­i­dent needs to exhib­it their for­eign pol­i­cy street cred. Sarah Pal­in’s attempts com­pelled the world to learn the prox­im­i­ty of Wasil­la, Alas­ka, to Rus­sia in 2008. Scott Walk­er made a sim­i­lar­ly telling gaffe this week at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence in Maryland.

“I want a com­man­der-in-chief who will do every­thing in their pow­er to ensure that threats from rad­i­cal Islam­ic ter­ror­ists do not wash up on Amer­i­can soil,” Walk­er told the crowd. ​“We need a leader with that kind of con­fi­dence. If I can take on 100,000 pro­tes­tors, I can do the same across the world.”

The state­ment came as part of a ram­bling response to the ques­tion of, if he became pres­i­dent, how would the gov­er­nor han­dle threats such as ISIS? Walk­er also said how, as a gov­er­nor, he receives threat assess­ments from the FBI and, with­out divulging clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, he has been con­cerned about ISIS for a long time.

Walk­er did not elab­o­rate in the com­par­i­son, and the sim­i­lar­i­ties are not read­i­ly appar­ent. The 2011 protests, in which thou­sands of pro­tes­tors descend­ed on the state capi­tol in Madi­son to fight against Walk­er’s aus­ter­i­ty bud­get and his attack on pub­lic work­er’s col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights, were notable for their size and lack of violence.

The main meth­ods of protest were the sit-in and pick­et signs. ISIS is infa­mous for its pen­chant for behead­ing, medieval tor­tures, and mass mur­der of civilians.

Although Walk­er is a vir­u­lent anti-work­er par­ti­san, it might do well to not assume mal­ice when incom­pe­tence is a valid excuse, as Walk­er has a ten­den­cy to act with­out think­ing about fur­ther ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Last month, Walk­er used a Drop­kick Mur­phys song as entrance music at a con­fer­ence in Iowa. The band tweet­ed at the gov­er­nor telling that they ​“lit­er­al­ly hate” him, and for Walk­er to stop using the band’s music.