With major Republican losses looming as a real possibility in the upcoming midterms, the White House is claiming that Iranian extremists are pushing Americans to support Democrats. There is just one glaring problem with that conveniently timed accusation: The document being cited never mentions the Democratic Party.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung led the charge, once again taking on his familiar role as one of the Trump administration’s loudest attack dogs and smear merchants. His attempt to turn an Iranian statement into Democratic campaign literature came roughly one month before the elections.

On Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps released a 26 page letter attacking President Donald Trump, who launched a war against Iran earlier this year. Cheung quickly presented the document as an appeal for American voters to cast ballots for Democrats.

“This garbage ‘letter’ is a farcical and laughable attempt by a desperate group of people (IRGC) who know they have no other options left because they have failed their own people, so they resort to telling the American people to ‘vote Democrat’,” Cheung wrote on X.

Cheung followed that broadside with another claim about the Iranian organization’s supposed political preference. “It is not a good sign when the IRGC shifts from ‘Death to America’ to ‘Vote Democratic,’” he wrote.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham eagerly joined the effort, expanding the alleged roster of Democratic supporters beyond Iran. “Those cheering on the Dems in the midterms: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, China, Carney, the EU and the Mexican cartels,” she wrote.

Right wing actor James Woods, who has promoted multiple false conspiracy theories, pushed the rhetoric even further. “When ‘Death to America’ and ‘Vote Democrat’ mean the same thing,” Woods wrote, collapsing a partisan attack and an extremist slogan into the same inflammatory message.

Conservative pundit Eric Daugherty made nearly the same argument as the White House. He claimed that “the IRGC just endorsed the Democrat Party for the 2026 midterms to punish President Trump.”

But the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps letter does not say what Cheung, Ingraham, Woods, or Daugherty claim it says. Despite their insistence that the document amounts to an endorsement of Democrats, the letter contains no mention of the Democratic Party at all.

The letter instead calls on Americans to take control back from corrupt politicians. It also attacks the Trump administration and the Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, but it does not tell Americans to vote for Democrats.

That distinction leaves the White House narrative resting on an unsupported partisan interpretation rather than the document’s actual language. Cheung and his ideological allies treated criticism of Trump as synonymous with explicit support for Democrats, then promoted that leap as if the letter had said it outright.

Trump, meanwhile, gave Iran’s hostile government a platform of legitimacy through his own actions. He attacked Iran without clear justification, while pointing at various times to nuclear weapons, regime change, oil access, and other issues.

The administration has also made false claims about the condition of Iran’s weaponry, describing it as “decimated.” It has repeatedly insisted that Iran reached a “deal” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while Trump has also been deceptive about how many U.S. military members were killed or wounded in his war.

The political damage surrounding the war helps explain the desperation evident in Cheung’s message. Voters opposed the conflict from the beginning, according to the source, and that opposition came before casualties and fuel costs skyrocketed.

Now, with roughly a month remaining before the midterms, the White House is trying to transform an Iranian attack on Trump into an endorsement of his domestic opponents. The claim looks less like evidence of Iranian support for Democrats than a frightened Republican Party scrambling for a campaign weapon.