You Knew Robert De Niro Would Turn Film Premiere Into Trump-Trashing Fest

Robert De Niro found a way Monday to zing Republican nominee Donald Trump at a screening for a movie that the actor isn’t even in.

The cinema icon appeared before the “Megalopolis” New York premiere in a half-hour Q&A with the sci-fi film’s writer and director, Francis Ford Coppola, and another filmmaking great, Spike Lee.

“Just imagine Donald Trump directing this film,” De Niro said, per Deadline. “It’ll never go anywhere ... He cannot do anything. He cannot hold anything together. ... He wants to destroy the country. And he could not do this movie. He couldn’t do anything that has a structure.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Coppola at one point drew comparisons between ancient Rome and present-day America. The nation’s prospects appeared to be on De Niro’s mind as well.

“I’m worried,” De Niro said, per the San Francisco Chronicle. “I see the things in Francis’ film about that, the parallels and so on. To me, it’s not over till it’s over and we have to go at this wholeheartedly to beat the Republicans —those Republicans, they’re not real Republicans — and beat Trump. It’s that simple. We cannot have that type of person. Everybody has to get out there and vote.”

Lee chimed in as well. “As my sister says, forward not backward,” he said. “It’s simple: Register to vote and show up. …. This election is going to be very, very close.”

De Niro has been a celebrity thorn in Trump’s side for years, but it recently cost him an honor.

The “Raging Bull” Oscar winner, who also won a supporting actor Oscar in Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II,” was stripped of a philanthropy award in May for campaigning for then-candidate President Joe Biden outside of Trump’s hush-money trial in Manhattan.

“It is clear that Mr. De Niro’s recent high-profile activities will create a distraction from the philanthropic work that we were hoping to recognize,” the National Association of Broadcasters’ Leadership Foundation said in rescinding the award.