‘Veep’ cast had Trump meeting over 2016 election: He ‘killed’ the show

Trumped by Trump.

“Veep” alum Reid Scott joked that Donald Trump was the reason for the show’s downfall in 2019.

The 46-year-old starred as Dan Egan in the HBO comedy, which debuted in 2012, for seven seasons.

“Trump killed ‘Veep,'” he said with a smile while speaking with Town & Country recently. “That was the joke amongst us when he was elected. We literally had a meeting about it [with] David Mandel, who was our showrunner at the time. We were really priding ourselves [how] ‘Veep’ always cracked the joke before it actually happened.”

“It was the opposite of ‘Law & Order’ — we weren’t ripping anything from the headlines. We were writing gags, and then it would f – – king happen. And everyone was all like, ‘How did they predict it?'” he continued.

“It got to the point where everything that was happening in politics around the 2016 election was so insane. The concern was, well, now it looks like we’re just aping the insanity of what’s actually happening, which is never what we did before.”

Trump was elected in 2016 and was the US president for four years.

Although Scott said it was the right time to say goodbye to the series, he thinks “there’s even a greater need for a show” like it now.

Trump clinched the 2024 Republican nomination for president this month and will face off again against President Joe Biden.

“Politics went … I don’t think it’s recovered,” Scott told the outlet. “But it went so gonzo for a while that we sat in stark contrast to that.”

The political satire followed Julie-Louis Dreyfus’ character Selina Meyer, who becomes vice president — and later president.

“It changed my life,” he gushed. “It really did: Intellectually, artistically, personally, across the board.”

With “Veep” behind him, Scott is now starring as Vincent Riley on Season 23 of “Law & Order.”

“There’s a level of trust—a camaraderie and a shorthand that begins to develop,” he said of the NBC drama. “It’s so smart that [creator Dick Wolf] started that back in the nineties and was like, I want to work with the same people. And it really feels like a family. It feels like a mafia family. And then I’ve married into it!”

He joked: “I’m learning the secrets; I’m starting to hear about where all the bodies are buried.”

The procedural series premiered in 1990, and is still going strong more than three decades later. Long-time star Sam Waterston recently departed the show, with Tony Goldwyn joining the cast in his place.

Scott has been a fan of “Law & Order” for years, revealing that he was desperate to be a guest star when he was first started out in Hollywood in the early 2000s.

“I was probably the only one in my circle of actor friends who didn’t appear on the show,” he looked back. “It was not for lack of trying, believe me. I wanted it so badly, because it was a rite of passage when you’re 20, 21. Everyone I knew was doing it, and for whatever reason, it never came my way.”