Several writers have cited Rorty's prediction of the rise of an authoritarian strongman who gains popularity among blue-collar workers, as prophetic of Donald Trump's rise to political power.
Wolf Lepenies noted Rorty's foresight in a German-language publication as it happened.
The passage that went viral is as follows:
[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers―themselves desperately afraid of being downsized―are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for ― someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here may then be played out. For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.

• 2016年11月のトランプの勝利は僅差によるものであり、選挙制度がより公正であればクリントンが勝っていた可能性があった。
• そのトランプは2020年にはバイデンに負けている。
• 2024年にトランプは再び勝利する可能性が高いと言われているが、仮に勝ったとしても僅差と思われる。高齢のバイデンに代わる魅力的な若手が対立候補になれば勝てないかもしれない。
• トランプ大統領の誕生はバック・トゥ・ザ・フューチャー PART2（1989年）でも予言されており、こちらのほうがより説得力がある。

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words 'nigger' and 'kike' will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.