John Oliver stopped by The Daily Show on Monday, this time with malevolent intentions.
Oliver wasn’t there to offer any wisdom or support, as host Jon Stewart assumed; instead he gloated about the U.S. government’s total lack of checks and balances on the Trump administration.
“America had its little fun, didn’t you, in experimenting with democracy?” said the British comedian, who was once a Daily Show correspondent himself. “You fought so hard to get away from us. Acting up, throwing all that tea into the harbor. You still owe us for that, by the way.”
“It was just tea, John,” said Stewart.
“It was just tea?!" Oliver yelled. “You take that back!”
Oliver’s appearance came right after Stewart covered Trump’s recent rejection of federal agencies and his attacks on birthright citizenship. Stewart was most concerned about the apparent lack of consequences to Trump’s constitutional violations.
Stewart concluded that America is becoming “less like the constitutional Republic it’s been for 250 years and more like the monarchy that we all fought to escape from,” and that’s when Oliver walked in.
“You told everybody that you were gonna be different,” Oliver gloated to America. “You weren’t gonna turn out like your mean old dad, who was so horrible to you when you were growing up.”
Oliver continued, “So we sat back. We 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. In fact, if I may sing from Hamilton...”
Oliver was about to sing King George’s song, “You’ll Be Back,” from the hit musical, but Stewart stopped him.
“That’s fair,” Oliver admitted.
Stewart soon responded that he doesn’t think the British Empire’s imperialist model is a right fit for America, but Oliver was unconvinced.
“Have you seen anything America’s done over the last 50 years?” Oliver asked. “Because for a country that doesn’t want to be an empire, you’re doing a pretty f---ing good impression of one right now.”
“Invasions, economic exploitations, and now suggesting turning Gaza into a beachfront casino?” Oliver said. “Even King George would have been like, ‘I don’t know, guys. Feels like the situation’s a bit more complicated than that, and I’m literally dying of medieval brain disease.‘”
Oliver’s words prompted Stewart to have a sad realization about America: “We really have become our father,” he said.
“Don’t be sad about it,” Oliver replied, consoling America as well as his former boss. “We couldn’t be more proud. This shouldn’t be a sad time. The arc of history is so long it eventually becomes a circle, and you end up right where you started.”
