John Oliver is back on The Daily Show, ten years after he left and just as America is entering an era that feels a lot like monarchy.
Oliver joined his old friend Jon Stewart on tonight’s show to “gloat” about this fact, and welcome the country into its new phase.
The host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight was the senior British correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart between 2006 and 2013 with a guest spot as host as Stewart went to direct Rosewater. It’s not his first return to the Comedy Central show, having appeared alongside Ronny Chieng in November 2023 to talk about satire and immigration.
His return came after President Donald Trump started making news such as renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, scaling back regulations and insisting that America was at its richest between 1870 and 1913.
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“It’s been a good run, America, it looks like we’re becoming less like the constitutional republic it’s been for 250 years and more like the monarchy that we all fought to escape from,” Stewart said before Oliver appeared.
“The prodigal son appears to have returned,” he said. “I am here to gloat. America had its little fun, experimenting with democracy. You fought so hard to get away from us, acting up, throwing all that tea into the harbor, you still owe us for that.”
“The point is you told everyone you were going to be different, you weren’t going to turn out like the mean old dad that was horrible to you growing up so we sat back and let you spend your wild teen years, experimenting with your ridiculous ideas of checks and balances because deep down we knew that once you got that nonsense out of your system, you’d be back,” he added. “Let me be the first to welcome America to its monarchy era. Congratulations everyone, you can take your place in the pantheon of great empires alongside the British, the Roman, the Klingon, Wakanda, whatever the Barbie elephant was the ruler of, I forget.”
Stewart tried to suggest that maybe America didn’t want to abandon its replica and “go full empire”.
“Don’t fight being a monarchy, embrace it, kings get shit done. Is it stuff you want done? Not necessarily but they do move quick, they taste cumin at lunch and take over entire continents by dinner time. That is how the British roll, f*ck everyone else, they’re not like us,” he said.
But Stewart pointed out that things “didn’t end up so great for the British empire”.
“First of all, how dare you? We are technically between empires at the moment but we’re keeping our castles warm and our crowns bejeweled for the day that we get back onto our feet,” he said. “Imperial model isn’t for you? For a country that doesn’t want to be an empire, you’re doing a pretty fucking good impression right now. Invasions, economic exploitations and now suggesting turning Gaza into a beachfront casino? Even King George would have been like ‘I don’t know guys, feels like the situation is a bit more complicated than that and I’m literally dying of medieval brain disease’”.
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