Francis Ford Coppola Has Put Donald Trump On Blast More Than Once

There are some Hollywood stars who have come out in favor of Donald Trump and then seen their reputations tank after their public support of him. On the flip side, there are plenty of those in the entertainment industry who aren't fans. A wide swath of celebs, from Rosie O'Donnell to Chrissy Teigen to Samuel L. Jackson, have publicly slammed Trump. And those are just the people in front of the camera.

Legendary filmmaker and producer Francis Ford Coppola, known for movies like "The Godfather" trilogy, "Apocalypse Now," and more, has also spoken out about Trump a number of times in Trump's first presidency and again in his second. So while there are maybe some surprising Trump family celebrity friendships, with the kind of things that the director has said about the president, it's unlikely that any in the Trump family will ever get close to Coppola and his family.

Long before Francis Ford Coppola was making award-winning films and Donald Trump became president, they actually went to the same school. They were both students at the New York Military Academy, though Donald started there in 1959 and Coppola was at Hofstra University at that point. In a 2018 interview with Time magazine, Coppola talked about his time at school and how Donald seemed to be a worse person as president than he had been when he was younger. "He was a 13-year-old rich kid going to a boarding school," Coppola said. "Over the years, I must say he really didn't impress me as being as awful as he's evolving. It makes me wonder why that's happening ... He wasn't such a bad guy 20 years ago. But I never knew him really well."

In 2024, Coppola talked about the fact that he and Donald came from different backgrounds, even though they went to the same school. Coppola got a music scholarship to be able to attend the private school. "I was poor," Coppola explained. "So I was a tuba player in the band. And he was rich. So he was in the headquarters where they could keep their lights on after 10:00," per Indiewire.

During the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump repeated the debunked theory that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were "eating the cats... eating the pets of the people who live there," via BBC. This bizarre (and false) claim had previously been promoted by then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance.

Francis Ford Coppola had some thoughts about these claims. Coppola has previously talked about the importance of immigration to the fabric of American culture, and when it came to the specific Haitian comments, he posted about it on Instagram. "I really was infuriated during the debates, when Haitian people were disparaged. ... The remarks that 'they eat the pets of people' is so outrageously insulting to a brave, creative and absolutely wonderful people, I cannot tolerate or remain silent."

Coppola was an executive producer of the movie "Freda," directed by Gessica Généus. It was filmed in Haiti, and he included an image from the film in his post. Plenty of commenters agreed with Coppola and thanked him for speaking out.

Francis Ford Coppola was the writer, producer, and director of the film "Megalopolis." He worked on the film for decades, and it finally came out in 2024. As he was discussing the movie at the Cannes Film Festival that year with some of the cast members, Trump's name came up. When asked about the future and his fears for it, Coppola said (via Variety), "Men like Donald Trump are not at the moment in charge, but there is a trend happening in the world ... there is a trend happening towards the more neo-right, even fascist division, which is frightening. Anyone who was alive during World War II saw the horrors that took place, and we don't want a repeat of that."

Jon Voight, who has supported Donald Trump, was in the cast, and Coppola noted they had differences in political opinion. But the two men seemed to agree there was a way for people to work together and make the world better despite differences.

Coppola also brought up Trump, though without saying his name, in September 2024 at the New York Film Festival screening of "Megalopolis." "Megalopolis" is modeled after the fall of Rome and set in a fictional New York, and when asked about the setting and context of his film, Coppola explained it could be a version of the future. "Today, America is Rome. And we're about to go through the same experience, for the same reasons, that Rome lost its republic and ended up with an emperor," he said, per The Hollywood Reporter. This movie is perhaps very prescient to do, a movie about America, because it's going to happen in a few months."

Donald Trump has been embracing tariffs as a major economic and foreign relations policy during his second term. In May 2025, he posted on Truth Social about tariffs and the movie industry, saying he wanted to "begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands."

Coppola has notably made films at locations around the world. He was asked by GQ about the proposed tariffs and if it would help make more films get made in America, and he didn't think so. "All it does is create uncertainty," Coppola said. "The United States really banked a lot of money previous to this new administration, and there's a lot of money in the country, and these tariffs are like slamming the door closed on what was a very prosperous situation."

Coppola isn't alone in being uncertain about tariffs being used as an effective way to boost American film production. Not many people seem to think it's the best way forward for the film industry. Even Jon Voight has suggested that Trump also include federal tax credits and other incentives beyond tariffs to help get more movies made in the U.S.