Matt Rife is a man of his word. When Whitney Cummings used her podcast to play matchmaker for Rife and Haliey Welch, the young woman who went viral for her “hawk tuah” video, the comedian offered tickets to his concert in her native Tennessee. “Do you want front row,” Rife flirted, “or do you want to be off to the side, like backstage?”
“Put me back there with you, my boy,” Welch responded, a playful come-on that had Cummings in hysterics.
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Those dreams came true this week, and Welch has the receipts, posting pictures of her backstage rendezvous with the Lucid comic on her Instagram. “Matt was everything I dreamed of,” Welch gushed.
Welch, who has been using her new-found fame to support animal shelters, may have had something to do with another visitor backstage as well. “A huge thank you to @nashvillehumane for bringing some puppies backstage for me to get my serotonin fix,” Rife posted on his own Instagram as a pooch licked his chiseled cheekbones. “If you live in the area, go meet your new best friend!”
As for his encounter with Welch? “Shoutout to @hay_welch for being the absolute sweetest and such a good sport. #HawkTuah”
But its wasn’t all sweetness and puppies. The evening’s most obvious yet disgusting pictures were a sequence in which Rife holds out cupped hands for Welch to hawk tuah into…
After which Rife appears to rub her saliva into his palms like it was HawkTuahTM brand hand sanitizer.
Bill Maher wouldn’t approve. When Welch appeared on his Club Random podcast, Maher recommended leaving her hawk-tuah moments behind. The salacious suggestion that “made you suddenly famous is nothing to be ashamed of, but now we have to move past that,” he advised.
Welch said she agreed, but that didn’t stop her from expectorating all over Matt Rife and posting it on Instagram. The pictures prompted plenty of spirited spitting conversation in Welch’s comment section. Some fans took exception to all the hawk tuah talk: “Bro stop, leave the lady alone. That whole meme got way out of control.”
Let it go? Others said they’ll stop bringing it up when Welch stops hawk-tuahing on people.