John Oliver makes surprise return to 'The Daily Show,' reunites with Jon Stewart: Watch

John Oliver has returned to his old stomping grounds.

The "Last Week Tonight" host made a surprise appearance Monday on "The Daily Show," where he reunited with Jon Stewart, more than a decade after exiting as a correspondent.

Oliver's cameo came at the end of a segment where Stewart argued President Donald Trump's "desire to take us back to our nation's historic greatness may tread into unconstitutional action." He suggested that under Trump, the United States may become "the monarchy that we all fought to escape from," setting up the British comedian to enter while slow clapping.

"The prodigal son appears to have returned," Oliver declared.

After Stewart asked if Oliver was there to offer America his "wisdom and counsel," Oliver joked that he was actually "here to gloat."

"America had its little fun, didn't you?" he said. "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, by the way."

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He continued by joking that Britain allowed America to spend its "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," adding, "Let me be the first to welcome America to its monarchy era!"

Oliver also quipped that "for a country that doesn't want to be an empire," the United States is doing a "good impression of one right now."

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Oliver rose to fame as a correspondent for "The Daily Show," where he worked alongside Stewart starting in 2006. He stepped in as host in 2013 while Stewart was on hiatus filming a movie. The comedian left in 2013 and debuted his own show, "Last Week Tonight," on HBO the following year. The latest season of "Last Week Tonight" premieres on Sunday.

In an appearance on Marc Maron's "WTF" podcast last year, Oliver said he left "The Daily Show" because his contract was up and Comedy Central "didn't care about me."

Stewart left as host of "The Daily Show" in 2015 and was succeeded by Trevor Noah, who hosted until 2022. Amid a lengthy search for a permanent replacement, Stewart returned in 2024 to host one night a week. He's set to stay on at least through 2025.

Speaking to USA TODAY last year, Oliver said it would "be really great to have" Stewart "stabilize things over there, because it's been so chaotic for the last year."

"From the outside, it seemed like the process they've set up is really just to be able to get anyone in the room and deliver some jokes about the news, whereas he is kind of singularly focused and has an ability to render complicated things very quickly," Oliver added. "So I'm excited to see what he's going to do 10 years on with the machine that he built."

Contributing: Gary Levin

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: John Oliver returns to 'The Daily Show' with Jon Stewart: Watch