The country’s best-known psychologist had to set Bill Maher straight.
Appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, Dr. Phil McGraw took on cable TV host when it came to the subject of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement raids.
And the man universally known as “Dr. Phil” gave the often-foul-mouthed Maher a taste of his own medicine.
NEW: Bill Maher confronts Dr. Phil over joining ICE raids — and Dr. Phil fires back, calling bullsh*t right to his face.
Dr. Phil doesn’t just curse for anything.
MAHER: “Why are you going on these ICE raids? I don’t understand that. You’re a guy who we know for so many years… pic.twitter.com/QAxAZ9waAt
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 9, 2025
During a wide-ranging discussion that included ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, Maher confronted Dr. Phil on his participation in ICE raids that are rounding up illegal aliens.
And in the process, he set the terms for an argument that fell right into McGraw’s hands.
“Why are you going on these ICE raids?” Maher asked, as Fox News reported. “I don’t understand that.
“You’re a guy who we know for so many years who has been working to put families together. To bring families who are apart and heal them. And now you’re going on raids with people who are literally separating families.”
McGraw’s initial reply was succinct:
“Well, that’s bull**t,” he said.
Check out the whole conversation out here:
It’s no secret that American political discourse has taken a turn into vulgarity in the Trump years (thanks largely to Democratic lawmakers who think serving in Congress is like being a TikTok influencer).
On the whole that’s a loss for the country, since it replaces even a veneer of reason with the brute force crudity. But in this case, McGraw’s description was dead on.
As he explained, separating families is an unavoidable byproduct of enforcing the law.
“Look, if you arrest somebody that’s a citizen, that has committed a crime or is DUI’d with a child in the backseat, do you think they don’t separate that family right then, right there?” he asked. “Of course they do!”
“But that’s not what’s going on,” Maher argued.
Actually, it is what’s going on. Maher & Co. just don’t like it.
The operative word in the phrase “illegal alien” is “illegal.” After four years of now-former President Joe Biden’s blatant disregard for the country’s immigration laws, a disregard that allowed an invasion of uncounted millions of illegals into the country, President Donald Trump is taking the first steps toward cleaning up that mess.
Those steps — baby steps at this point, for all the leftist caterwauling — include targeting the worst of the worst first — illegals convicted of serious crimes yet still living in the country. But they’re not limited to that.
From their arguments, Maher and Smith appeared to think that the presence of illegal alients wasn’t a problem as long as those illegal aliens weren’t, say, cold-blooded murders, child rapists, or members of savage transnational gangs.
“They’re going to the car wash,” Maher said, in the patently condescending tone he’s perfected to an irritating pitch.
“They’re going to places where people are already working.”
And then he go to an implicit threat — apparently assuming that the kind of logic that works with Los Angeles liberals works with the rest of the country.
“And by the way, a lot of Latinos in this city are hiding,” he said.
“If you can’t go to work because you’re hiding, what other recourse is it for them except crime? I feel like this is going to turn out the opposite of what they wanted.”
His audience applauded, as expected, and Maher’s comment it constituted the last word on the subject (it’s his show, after all). But there were a couple of problems with it.
The first one was obvious to anyone looking at the question honestly. Illegal aliens in the United States always have the “recourse” to leave the country if they’re tired of hiding. The Trump administration will even assist in the self-deportation.
The second is that it made McGraw’s point.
Men and women who enter the country illegally have committed a crime, by definition, to get into the United States.
They’re committing a crime by staying in the United States — whether they’re working at a car wash in Colorado, loitering near a Home Depot in Las Vegas, or running a prostitution racket in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ congressional district.
The fact that they might get arrested is pretty much baked into engaging in illegal behavior in the first place — and that means the potential separation of families is, too.
As Dr. Phil pointed out at the beginning of the conversation, that’s a matter of course in law enforcement, and it’s one most Americans understand.
Do you agree with Dr. Phil?
The reality is that when Joe Biden invited millions upon millions of foreigners to enter the country illegally, he not only violated his own country’s laws and betrayed its sovereignty, he put those very foreigners at risk as well.
Because the hard truth means cleaning up his mess will mean not only deporting drug dealers, gang bangers and sex traffickers, it will mean deporting otherwise honest individuals in the country illegally hoping only for a better life.
That’s the job Trump was elected to do. It’s the job ICE agents have been tasked with.
Maher and the likes of Stephen A. Smith might wring their hands about, but McGraw described that feeling perfectly.
It was only two words, but he nailed it.
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