Dr. Phil Goes Off Topic with Covid Shutdowns Rant on The View, Panel Push Back

While talking about mental health issues for school children on 'The View,' Dr. Phil abruptly shifted from smart phones to railing against Covid shutdowns.

The panel on The View didn't seem quite prepared for Dr. Phil's sudden and passionate comments about Covid shutdowns, which he saw as hugely detrimental to school children, with Sunny Hostin countering that "they were trying to save their lives."

It started relatively calm with Dr. Phil and the panel discussing the rise in mental health issues school-aged children are dealing with, like depression and anxiety. He argued that it started around 2008 with the proliferation of smart phones and the dawn of social media.

According to the talk show host, this was when young people "stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives."

As a result, he argued "we saw the biggest spike and the highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicidality since records have ever been kept."

Dr. Phil McGraw, author of the new book 'We've Got Issues,' explains why he says since parents are not the only voice in their kids' ears, they need to be the best voice. https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/KEX4B5pxQ4

— The View (@TheView) February 26, 2024

He then quickly catapulted more than a decade to the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent shutdowns. According to Dr. Phil, it was "the same agencies that knew" about the mental health issues in the schools "that shut down the schools for two years."

"Who does that? Who takes away the support system for these children? Who takes it away and shuts it down?" he asked. "And by the way, when they shut it down, they stopped the mandated reporters from being able to see children that were 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%."

It was at this point that Hostin interjected, trying to remind him that this wasn't an isolated decision as there was a larger issue. "There was also a pandemic going on and they were trying to save their lives," she countered.

Whoopi Goldberg quickly chimed in, "They were trying to save kids' lives. So, remember, we know a lot of folks who died during this. People weren't laying around eating bonbons."

Responding to the people who died, Dr. Phil pushed back, "Not school children."

"You know what? We're lucky," Goldberg retorted. "Maybe we're lucky they didn't, because they kept them out of the places that they could be sick because no one wanted to believe we had an issue."

Ana Navarro pointedly asked Dr. Phil, "Are you saying no school children died of Covid?"

"I'm saying it was the safest group," he replied. "They were the less vulnerable group, and they suffered and will suffer more from the mismanagement of Covid than they will from the exposure to Covid, and that's not an opinion, that's a fact."

It was at this point they had to throw to commercial break, effectively ending the interview.