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Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Taylor Frankie Paul’s dirty laundry is our reality check

"The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" star and almost "Bachelorette" reflects a media-enabled numbness to wrongdoing

Published March 21, 2026 9:00AM (EDT)

Devoted viewers of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” have seen the 2023 video that ended Taylor Frankie Paul’s journey on “The Bachelorette” before it began – part of it, anyway. The police body cam footage of her arrest serves as the “Mormon Wives” premiere’s cliffhanger.

Until Thursday, that is the extent of what most “Mormon Wives” viewers know about what Paul calls “the worst night of my life” without saying why. The second episode picks up one year later, showing Paul pregnant with the child of Dakota Mortensen, her boyfriend at the time and the other adult involved in the incident that got her arrested.

“It has been a challenge going from the scandal to relationship to miscarriage to arrest to being pregnant again,” she says as a sentimental melody lilts in the background. From there, any open questions about that night were quickly set aside to focus on the baby drama. Yes, she was charged with aggravated assault and sentenced to 36 months’ probation, she explains, but the revelation that she and Mortensen never broke up? So much juicier.

As fresh domestic abuse allegations have come to light, along with a video showing what occurred before the cops came to Paul’s door in 2023, we’re reminded that some things can’t be buried under four seasons of manufactured drama, regardless of what a major media corporation might have hoped.

Paul would have been the first “Bachelorette” lead who hadn’t appeared on a previous season of “The Bachelor,” had ABC not decided to pull the new season from its prime-time lineup before its Sunday premiere. But that video, obtained by TMZ, shows why she was never a suitable choice to lead this Disneyfied romance fantasy.

In it, Paul violently throws barstools at Mortensen as her young child sits on a couch in the same room. Mortensen appears to deflect one that flies in the........

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