There’s a Reverend Dave Hammond in Myra, Kentucky. There’s another Reverend Dave Hammond who preaches at a church in Nebraska. There is no footprint, however, of any Reverend Dave Hammond in Iowa.

There is a Dave Hammond who got his undergraduate degree in psychology a couple years ago at the University of Iowa. There’s also an engineering professor in Iowa named Dave Hammond. There’s also a Dave Hammond who owns Hammond Motorsports over in Clinton County, Iowa. There’s even a guy named Dave Hammond who has earned a black belt in martial arts. None of these Dave Hammonds are religious leaders, though.

So, who is this Dave Hammond that Donald Trump claims is a faith leader supporting him in Iowa?

A clue is found in the listing of Rose Hammond as another member of the Trump 2024 Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, signed up right next to Dave Hammond. Rose Hammond is listed as an “evangelist”, and is from Dallas County, Iowa, just like Dave Hammond.

Back in 2015, when former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was campaigning for the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination, David Hammond and Rose Hammond showed up as a pair of supporters of the Huckabee for President campaign. They were listed as members of the Guthrie County Leadership Team, working under the leadership of Huckabee’s Guthrie County chair Louise Wagner.

Back then, Dave and Rose Hammond were living in Guthrie County, Iowa. Back then, Dave and Rose Hammond seemed to think Mike Huckabee would make a better Republican presidential candidate than Donald Trump.

Nowhere in anything connected to the 2016 Huckabee for President campaign were Dave and Rose Hammond listed as a reverend and an evangelist. They were just local Iowa Republican Party activists.

So, can Dave Hammond and Rose Hammond be counted as genuine Iowa faith leaders, supporting Donald Trump for President in 2024?

Is it possible that they’re just really low-profile Christian leaders? Could they be stealth religious leaders with a following so small that their identities barely show up anywhere at all online, never having been mentioned even once in someone’s Facebook post or in the local newspaper?

If that’s the case, we need to question what it means for someone to be a Christian leader. Anyone can declare themselves to be a “reverend” or an “evangelist” without having any actual education or experience.

Maybe Dave Hammond and Rose Hammond lead prayers at their family’s picnic now and then. Maybe they’re part of a small group of people who meet at a local diner now and then to talk about Jesus.

That’s not the impression that was meant to be given, however, when Donald Trump bragged that he had achieved the endorsement of over 300 Christian leaders in Iowa just a couple of weeks before the 2024 Iowa caucuses, with that list including David Hammond and Rose Hammond.

The impression that was meant to be given in that announcement was that Donald Trump had obtained the endorsement of highly influential Christian leaders across Iowa.

It looks an awful lot like the Donald Trump campaign needed to make a big impression in Iowa, and wanted to show a big number of Christian leaders supporting Trump. Dave and Rose Hammond showed up as Trump supporters, and were willing to be added to the list, to puff it up.

Of course, this interpretation could be wrong. It could be that Dave and Rose Hammond are a genuine Iowa Christian power couple, bona fide faith leaders who just so happen to have no followers that ever mention their mere existence.

If that’s the case, Dave Hammond and Rose Hammond are welcome to pop their heads up and correct the misapprehension that their presence on Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition is totally bogus.

Do you have anything to say for yourself, Dave?