Robert De Niro bashes Donald Trump during Megalopolis NY premiere

Francis Ford Coppola and Robert De Niro have been peers since the 1960s. The latter actually won his first Oscar for his performance in Coppola's The Godfather Part II. He doesn't have a role in the director's new film, Megalopolis, but he attended its NY premiere and proceeded to steal the show.

De Niro and director Spike Lee conducted a panel with Coppola ahead of the film's screening at the AMC Lincoln Square. They discussed the production of Megalopolis, of course, but De Niro decided to effectively hijack the panel to do some Donald Trump bashing.

Robert De Niro claimed Trump could "never" direct

The legendary actor shifted the focus from Coppola to Trump by claiming that Trump could have never been able to direct a film as ambitious as Megalopolis. No, there was no mention of Trump beforehand, or additional context. De Niro just wanted to do some public dunking.

"Just imagine Donald Trump directing this film. It’ll never go anywhere, from total craziness. He cannot do anything. He cannot hold anything together."

The Killers of the Flower Moon star didn't stop there. He proceeded to leave the analogy of Trump being a director (an admittedly ridiculous concept) behind and resort to criticizing the Republican Presidential nominee for his ideologies.

De Niro and Spike Lee urged viewers to vote

"He wants to destroy the country," De Niro opined. "And he could not do this movie. He could not do anything that has a structure." The actor briefly moved on from the Trump bashing, but he brought it back around when asked whether he saw parallels between the politics in Megalopolis and the state of the country.

“I see the things in Francis’ film about that, the parallels and so on," he told Spike Lee. "To me, it’s not over ’till it’s over and we have to go at this wholeheartedly to... beat Trump. It’s that simple." Lee, also an Oscar winner and longtime friend of Coppola's, echoed De Niro's sentiments.

He quoted Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris and urged those in the audience to go out and vote. Megalopolis, the film that got lost in the political discourse of the evening, will be released in theaters nationwide on September 27.