Bill Maher doesn’t believe “Tayvis” is long for this world. On his podcast, Club Random, the comedian predicted the end of pop phenom Taylor Swift and Super Bowl winning football star Travis Kelce‘s relationship, saying bluntly, “He’s gonna dump her.”
Maher made his bold prediction during a conversation with viral star Haliey Welch, a.k.a Hawk Tuah Girl. The 68-year old Real Time with Bill Maher host told the 21 year-old Welch that while he believes Swift to be “a lovely person,” he does not see her much buzzed-about relationship with the Kansas City tight end lasting much longer—in part because he thinks Swift is “a little old” to be leaning into the persona of a football player’s girlfriend.
“I just felt like 35 was a little old to be like, ‘My boyfriend’s a football player and I wear his jersey to the game with his number on it!’” said Maher. “I mean, come on.”
While some football fans certainly have shared Maher’s frustration with Swift’s presence at Kelce’s NFL games, Welch doesn’t seem to be bothered by Swift or her relationship. “Whatever makes her happy,” said Welch. “If that’s what she wants to do and it makes her happy, it ain’t got nothin’ to do with me.”
Despite Welch expertly teeing Maher up to mind his own business, the comedian then laid further into Swift and Kelce’s relationship—predicting not only that it will end, but that Kelce will be the one to end it. “He’s gonna dump her, though, You know that?” said Maher. “With her, it’s like the Gatorade at the Super Bowl, you know you’re gonna get dumped. You just don’t know when.”
A lifelong fan of Swift, Welch attempted to put a positive spin on Maher’s negative comments, thinking about the potential upside of a Swift breakup: new music. She cited as an example Swift’s song “Dear John,” widely believed to be about the singer’s relationship with John Mayer. “You gotta think about it this way. If he does that, can you imagine the next album we’re gonna get off of that? It won’t be ‘fuck John Mayer’ no more, it will be ‘fuck Travis,’” said Welch.
Swift and Kelce have been going strong since they began dating in July of 2023. In the year since, Kelce won Super Bowl LVIII with the Kansas City Chiefs, while Swift won her fourth album of the year Grammy for her 2023 album Midnights. Despite their individual successes and their seemingly strong relationship, Maher harped on the tired trope that Swift mining her personal life for art—something artists have done for centuries—is “very tacky.” “That was a long time ago,” he said of Swift’s relationship with John Mayer. “Is she still singing about that?”
Although no one asked for Maher’s opinion, it didn’t stop him from taking one final shot at Swift. “It does seem like such a recurrent theme,” said Maher. “At some point, you just wanna say, maybe you should write a song called ‘Maybe It’s Me.’” For the record, Swift did just that in 2022: it was called “Anti-Hero,” and it debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard charts. Maybe we should leave the songwriting to the international pop star and 14-time Grammy winner rather than a podcast host.