Dr. Phil and ‘The View’ hosts clash after he says kids suffered more from school lockdowns than COVID

Dr Phil has unleashed on a popular TV show about the extraordinary measures enacted at American schools during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The American TV personality, whose real name is Phil McGraw, appeared on a recent episode of The View when he took aim at the lockdowns that forced children across the United States to study from home due to health concerns.

Speaking about his new book, We’ve Got Issues, Dr Phil was asked about how children should deal with social media platforms.

“In, like, ’08, ’09, smartphones came on, and kids started, they stopped living their lives and starting 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,” Dr Phil said, the Independent reported.

He then pivoted to criticise the lockdown orders.

“… then Covid hits 10 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 it 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 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 percent to 60 percent.”

American lawyer and The View host Sunny Hostin interjected: “There was also a pandemic going on…”

Her co-host, actor and comedian Whoopi Goldberg also pushed back by stating that the lockdowns were an attempt to “save kids’ lives”.

“Remember, we know a lot of folks who died during this,” she said.

Dr Phil retorted: “Not schoolchildren” before clarifying that children were the “safest group”.

“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,” he said to applause from the audience.

“Well, Phil, we don’t even have time to talk it out,” Goldberg said before ending the segment.

He previously compared Covid-19 to non-contagious causes of death, including questioning why the country was not shut down for car crash fatalities or deaths caused by smoking cigarettes.