The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng Says Obtaining His US Citizenship Felt Like Joining an ‘Evil Empire’

Ronny Chieng, a Malaysian-born correspondent and host for The Daily Show, recently became a United States citizen.

He described the experience as akin to “joining an evil empire” on Friday’s Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast.

Chieng said he moved to the US in 2015 to pursue his comedy career and applied for citizenship while President Barack Obama was still in office.

Almost a decade later, now as an American citizen, the stand-up comedian said he routinely turns down international gigs – in part because he does not know if he could come back if he left.

“It’s kind of 30 years in the making, in the sense that I’ve been trying to come back to America since I left in ’93 when I was seven years old,” he said on the podcast. “I’ve been trying to come back to do stand-up comedy, and I finally got to come back in 2015, 10 years ago, and then citizenship nine years later.”

He added that “it’s a weird time to do it,” because it was America’s cultural exports that attracted him, not things like the Iraq War.

“So it’s weird to join,” he said. “It’s like you’re joining this evil empire, but that’s not why you joined it. It just so happened, the evil empire had some really nice TV shows, and they do stand and they do stand-up comedy in The Death Star.”

Listen:

The comic also said President Donald Trump has a big impact on what the show covers, but he does not know an America without Trumpism.

“I came [to Comedy Central] at the end of 2015, so this Trump thing is all I’ve known,” he said. “This isn’t that new, to be honest. Since I came to America, his shadow has been looming or in charge.”

He concluded Trump’s second term has been “outlandish” and likened covering it to being in a “car wreck every day.”

Listen above via the Awards Circuit Podcast.