On Monday, Dr. Phil McGraw appeared on "The View," and he did not hold back when speaking about COVID-19 lockdowns. 

McGraw wrote a book — called, "We've Got Issues: How You Can Stand Strong for America's Soul and Sanity." The release date is February 27th. He criticizes the COVID-19 school lockdowns in the new book. 

He told "The View" co-hosts that smartphones stopped some kids from living their lives, tying that to COVID lockdowns:

Well, think about it, in like 08, 09, smartphones came on. And kids stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives. And so we saw the biggest spike and the highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicidality since records have ever been kept. And it’s just continued on and on and on. And then COVID hits ten years later, and the same agencies that knew that are the agencies that shut down the schools for two years. Who does that? Who takes away the support system for these children? Who takes them away and shuts it down? And by the way, when they shut it down, they stopped the mandated reporters from being able to see children being abused and sexually molested and in fact sent them home and abandoned them to their abusers with no way to watch and referrals dropped 50 to 60 percent.

WATCH:

Our children will suffer more from the mismanagement of COVID than they will from the exposure to COVID. #TheView #DrPhil #WeveGotIssues pic.twitter.com/41Uszu1A3U

— Dr. Phil (@DrPhil) February 26, 2024

Sunny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg wasted no time jumping on McGraw's statement, trying to disprove his point. 

Hostin said:

There was also a pandemic going on and they were trying to save kids' lives.

Goldberg jumped in, adding:

They were trying to save kids lives. Remember, we know a lot of folks who died during this, so it wasn't — people weren't laying around.

McGraw interjected, "Not school children." 

Per UNICEF, as of March 2023, 0.4 percent of those who passed away from COVID were children. 

Goldberg responded:

Well, you know what, we're lucky. Maybe we're lucky we didn't, because we kept them out of the places that they could be sick, because no one wanted to believe we had an issue.

Bastian Betthauser, a researcher at the Sciences Po Centre for Research on Social Inequalities in France and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, said this about school closures:

Schoolchildren’s learning progress slowed down substantially during the pandemic. So on average, children lost out on about one-third of what they would have usually learned in a normal school year, and these learning deficits arose quite early in the pandemic. Children still have not recovered the learning that they lost out on at the start of the pandemic. Also, education inequality between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds increased during the pandemic. So the learning crisis is an equality crisis. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds were disproportionately affected by school closures.

Yet Goldberg and Hostin didn't mention the learning loss that negatively impacted children either because they don't care or it doesn't fit their narrative. 

McGraw also told a disturbing story to "The View" co-hosts about his visit to the Southern border:

🚨DR PHIL: "We are using American tax dollars to ship children into known prostitution and sweatshops."

This is must watch.

Dr. Phil tells The View that while he was visiting the southern border, A “head of the border guards” revealed this stunning information — as children… pic.twitter.com/kPZRGrEzbP

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 26, 2024