‘The View’ dresses child as Chinese Spy Balloon one year after facing backlash for Oscars slap costume

Eye spy with my little eye… a really bad idea.

For the second year in a row, “The View” dressed up children for Halloween in costumes inspired by some of the year’s most viral and talked about headlines.

Created by the talk show’s wardrobe supervisor, Ashley Alderfer Kaufman, today’s episode featured a young child dressed up as the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down after it had floated clear across America’s airspace — eight days and more than 4,000 miles after it first breached the US border.

“Every year there is a new story that we are all fixating on,” Kaufman explained. “This year is what this one: the Chinese spy balloon? At first, no one knew what it was [or] why it was there — a floating balloon flying across the U.S. airspace for seven days. Finally, the U.S. Air Force shot it down and officials reported it was carrying intelligence-gathering equipment yet no information was sent back to China.”

Off camera one of the co-hosts screamed “Oh my God” as the child appeared on the stage wearing a top hat and holding a magnifying glass. Legal expert Sunny Hostin added “I love it” with a laugh.

Other kid friendly costumes featured on this morning’s telecast included a boy dressed up Gerry Turner from “The Golden Bachelor,” a plethora of girls donned in Taylor Swift‘s gorgeous “The Eras Tour” looks, a shelf of banned books and two young children dressed as Rockem Sockem Robots with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg faces attached to them punching each other in the cranium, which was a clear reference to the “X’ (formerly known as Twitter) owner challenging the Meta CEO to a cage match.

This isn’t the first time the talk show’s Halloween costume segment gave people something to talk about

Last year during a segment titled “Boo are you wearing?” “The View” featured a a child wearing a gold from head to toe with.a red hand print on their face to tackle arguably the biggest story of the year: the Oscar slap between Will Smith and Chris Rock.

“We do not want to endorse violence of any kind but we couldn’t help but talk about one of the hottest topics of this year,” Kaufman said at the time.

The child’s costume was bashed by users on X who called the costume distasteful.

“The View” airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.