Betrayals Small and Large

In 2022, I published a White Paper called “Pulling Back the Curtain.” It presented themes from 25 interviews with executive advertising women who signed the “Time’s Up Advertising” manifesto, a commitment to root out sexual violence and fight for gender equity in advertising.

Given the perils America in today, Time’s Up Hollywood, Time’s Up Healthcare, Time’s Up Advertising seem almost quaint. Still, in returning to it the theme of betrayal leaped out, which them made me think of its ultimate demise – and the connection that has to today’s massive betrayal.

First, Time’s Up was a movement about, by and for women. Then, as now, it was only marginally tolerated across the broader society.

Second, Time’s Up was betrayed, which led to its final demise. In 2021 Time’s Up was led by Roberta Kaplan – who is far more famous for winning E. Jean Carroll’s case against Donald Trump. In August of 2022 she resigned because she was also providing counsel, behind the curtain, to then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He was, as we now know, forced out because of sexual harassment accusations. Her betrayal of the movement’s purpose was the final nail in the Time’s Up coffin.

Betrayal comes in many forms and provides many lessons.

How odd it is that Mr. Trump and Ms. Kaplan seem the perfect pair to teach us of betrayals. Though Ms. Kaplan would undoubtedly shiver upon reading these words, for they have long loathed one another. She the perpetrator of a small and nearly forgotten betrayal. It is however, unlikely that her betrayal is forgotten by the women who had put their names and hopes behind the Time’s Up movement. He, the Traitor in Chief, along with an Apartheid Nazi billionaire, Fascist former military men and MAGA oligarchs, all acting as perpetrators of a massive, still underway, tsunami of betrayals.

Lesson one, from 2022 and Time’s Up. A betrayal, assumed to be hidden behind the curtain, has ripple effects. For a betrayal, no matter the size, is still a betrayal. In this case, her betrayal impacted and silenced or harmed many women.

Lesson two, from spring 2025, and the Trump administration. Betrayals, big and bold, not hidden behind a curtain, but rather forming a tsunami of betrayals, remain betrayals. Each impacting and often silencing or harming many. In this case the many are Americans of all ethnicities, races, genders and ages, living everywhere across this great land. Moreover, these brazen betrayals will have negative impacts for generations to come.

Unlike Time’s Up, the lead perpetrator is an elected official – the President. He has betrayed his oath to the Constitution and the trust of the American people. His betrayals pour forth from behind the curtain, ripping it aside as they flow, Crashing over citizens with a toxic and cruel flood of maleficence.

Though I’m sure Mr. Trump would be happy to know his betrayals are larger than those of many a man. Though big or small – betrayals remains betrayals.

Today history, which seems lost to too many, tells us of past America betrayals, when “we the people” rose up and resisted. With today’s brazen betrayals in motion, by an authoritarian would be king, we must audaciously enter the halls of treachery and demand fidelity to the constitution.

Democracy is at stake.

I close, returning to the wise and brave women as they embraced Time’s Up, because their words ring true today. “We must take ownership” of what is before us, or we will be left to “take accountability for a world that we let happen.“

The future is in our hands.

Truths matter.