Dr. Phil McGraw managed to raise some eyebrows on this morning’s episode of The View as he discussed political issues from the current border crisis to the detrimental effects of school shutdowns during the pandemic.

The interview quickly became awkward after Sunny Hostin asked McGraw about his upcoming interview at the Southern border, which will air in his new series, Dr. Phil Primetime. According to the television personality, the head of all the border guards claimed that children coming into the U.S. with phone numbers and addresses written on their arms are most likely getting sent into prostitution rings or sweat shops.

“[I said], ‘Is it possible that we’re sending them into known prostitution rings or sweat shops?’ He said, ‘It’s not possible. It is absolute,'” McGraw recalled from his interview. “We are using American tax dollars to ship children into known prostitution and sweat shops.”

Hostin quickly jumped in to clarify whether this is allegedly happening to “all children or some children,” to which McGraw replied, “Well, who knows? We don’t know.”

When they came back from the commercial break, Hostin countered that “many” of the phone numbers written on children belong to their family members already in the U.S., while only “some” of the children are sex trafficked.

While data regarding trafficking at the border is vague at this time, the Council on Foreign Relations reports that Immigration authorities came across 152,000 unaccompanied minors at or near the Southern border in 2022. The Human Trafficking Institute further estimates that 72% of human trafficking victims in the U.S. are immigrants. 

As for why the Federal Government and U.S. Attorneys offices are not involved, McGraw suggested that there is a “resource issue.”

“It’s hard to know,” he added of whether the Biden administration has been notified of the issue. “[Border patrol] say that they’re so overwhelmed with processing that that’s all they can do. They’ve become social workers and processors and not investigators and border guards because they’re just processing, processing, processing.”

Tensions only grew between McGraw and some of the co-hosts after he criticized school shutdowns amid the pandemic, noting that the onset of social media 10 years earlier brought on the “highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicidality” in school-aged adolescents.

“The same agencies that knew that are the agencies that shut down the schools for two years,” he said. “Who does that? Who takes away the support system for these children? Who takes it away and shuts it down?”

McGraw continued, “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.”

According to PreventChildAbuse.org, risk factors for child abuse worsened when the pandemic hit, however, numbers show a reduction in child physical abuse cases. What’s unclear is whether there was an actual decrease in abuse or merely a change in how many instances got reported to child welfare agencies.

Whoopi Goldberg swiftly chimed in to remind McGraw why schools were shut down in the first place.

“They were trying to save kids’ lives. Remember, we know a lot of folks who died during this [pandemic],” she said, to which McGraw muttered, “Not school children.”

Goldberg then fired back, “Well, you know what? We’re lucky. Maybe we’re lucky they didn’t, because we kept them out of the place where they could be sick. Because no one wanted to believe we had an issue.”

Ana Navarro also jumped in to grill the Dr. Phil host, asking if he truly believed that no schoolchildren died of COVID.

“I’m saying it was the safest group,” he explained. “They were the least vulnerable group and they suffered and will suffer more from the mismanagement of COVID than they will from the exposure of COVID, and that’s not an opinion, that’s a fact.”

Unfortunately, the ladies weren’t able to debate their guest any further as time was up for their interview.

“Well, Phil, we don’t even have time to talk it out now, man,” Goldberg said, before throwing it to a commercial break.

The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.