California’s Democratic state party chairman has compared GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to Joseph Goebbels.

“They lie and they don’t care if people think they lie … Joseph Goebbels — it’s the big lie, you keep repeating it,” John Burton, the state party chairman, said in an interview with two California reporters on Monday.

Burton was criticizing Ryan’s address to the Republican convention when he made the comparison to Hitler’s propagandist.

{mosads}According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Burton said Ryan told “a bold-faced lie and he doesn’t care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie.”

The Chronicle reporter and a KCBS television reporter were interviewing Burton at an event in Charlotte, N.C., the site of the Democratic convention, according to the newspaper’s report.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt criticized the remarks.

“That doesn’t have any place in the political discourse here in Charlotte,” he said, according to a report in Buzzfeed.

Democrats have been hitting Ryan hard over his address to the Republican convention. They argue the speech included several falsehoods.

Former Senator and National Co-Chairman of the Romney Jewish Coalition Norm Coleman released a statement criticizing Burton’s remarks. 

“President Obama promised to lift up American politics. Unfortunately, some of his supporters, by employing rhetoric that has no place in our political system, are bringing it down to the gutter,” he said. “The comments by California Democratic Chair John Burton likening the Republican Party to Nazis and Joseph Goebbels are just such an instance. All people of good will should repudiate such disgraceful words.”

This story was updated at 2:08 p.m.