Dr. Nicole Saphier

I think he had a clipping a while ago.

Yeah, no, the clipping is open. So, I mean, my husband being a neurosurgeon, he's endovascular, but clipping is where you remove the skull, you dissect down. I mean, it certainly can cause trauma.

I mean, if he has dementia, then a vascular dementia is absolutely a possibility. He has chronic atrial fibrillation. He could have thrown microthrombi, which has caused micro ischemic strokes, certainly having a history of subarachnoid hemorrhage, which prompted the aneurysm repair. That can cause, as you're mentioning, gliosis and other scarring.

You can see various levels of dementia with this, and not always do you get back to your cognitive state. I mean, look at Senator Fetterman. I mean, it took him a while to get back after a large ischemic stroke, but if you are having chronic microstrokes throughout decades, I mean, it can certainly lead to... dementia like symptoms or dementia itself.

I mean, vascular dementia is very common, so it's possible. But also, as you know, he's he's 82 at the age of 82. You are at higher risk for all types of dementia. I mean, it's just it is what it is. And that's one of the you know, we're living much longer thanks to all of our longevity stuff. But we have not tackled the dementia, you know, the dementia side of it.

I mean, luckily, we're starting to see some supplements and some ways for us to decrease our risk of dementia. but he certainly wasn't privy to it to the last several decades.

Because so much of what we do is physician. The last time that I did rounds was probably approaching two decades ago, but that's okay. Let's play this little game. You have an 82-year-old man with an extensive past medical history.

Pertinent positives are chronic cardiovascular disease, including you have the chronic atrial fibrillation, throwing microemboli, you have the aneurysm rupture, followed by the clipping. I mean, all of this could lead to some of his cognitive decline that we have

obviously witness over you know the last five to ten years but on top of that you've also seen some physical signs of him just watching him i mean just just someone watching him you see a shuffling stiffened gate um you see him getting lost a little bit kind of needing to move

know some of this can some of this can point to parkinson's his doctors or his medical report says it's just from degenerative change but it certainly makes me question i for one would want to see some brain imaging maybe a pet scan just to look at some of the areas to evaluate for certain types of dementia i'm certain they've done that and they just haven't disclosed it to us i mean there's there's no way a physician wouldn't have done that

And then on top of it, now he has an advanced prostate cancer diagnosis, very aggressive, metastatic to the bone. While it is hormone sensitive, there are some treatments for it, but this is most likely exacerbated his cognitive issues that he's already dealing with. You mentioned it. You can have metabolic issues making it worse, the stress, the medications. And also while he was president,

He wasn't getting quality sleep. I mean, we know that he was sleeping a lot, but unless you're sleeping seven to nine hours the same time every single night, I mean, he certainly had disruptions. I think that this probably exacerbated his mental and physical health decline.

Well, I mean, it's devastating. It's out of sight when anyone is, you know, having advanced terminal disease. But the good news is that he is now in should be in retirement. I mean, I guess he's still doing some speaking events. But this is the time where you should be focusing on your family and spending time and actually relaxing.

I mean, the worst place he could have been was a second term in the White House. So he should be grateful that things turned out the way that they did.

Absolutely. Yes, first of all, so I actually had a conversation with President Trump last weekend, and anybody who's actually been one-to-one conversation with him, there's unequivocally no doubt that there's no level of cognitive decline there. His memory and recall are better than mine. He certainly has more energy than I do. He remembers names, remembers faces.

He can look at an entire crowd, say hello to someone, and he can remind you about something you talked about five years ago. I mean, his memory recall is... is quite impressive. There is no sign, in my opinion, of any cognitive decline in President Trump. And in fact, I think we should study what he's been doing because he is doing so well in terms of his cognition.

And I'm happy to see that he is actually losing some weight. I think his cholesterol improved. He's trending in the right way. He's doing everything right as you can or as you know, as we would like to see. He's getting all of his cancer screenings. So I think, you know, he is physically and mentally fit. We'll see how he does at his next annual examination.

Which I do not recommend, though. I don't recommend that.

Well, one of the things, as you know, for longevity is to continuously switch back and forth between the right and the left brain. And President Trump certainly does that with everything that he is doing. He is constantly being very active, you know, trying not to be patronizing. The only thing I would say to him is sometimes say what you want to say, but then stop.

You don't have to keep going in what you're saying. And maybe that'll just help with some of the criticism because I'm always like, yes, yes. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, back up. Hold on. No need to just, just leave it at that.

You know, this is obviously very complicated. And the problem is that a lot of physicians don't want to make the decisions, whether it's because of liability. They don't want to be sued if they make the wrong decision or whatnot. But a lot of physicians point to these recommendations. So therefore, they can point back to that if something goes wrong down the road.

I mean, that is what my assumption is there. Dr. Marty McCary, who's a friend and a colleague of mine, he and I, we were in constant communication all throughout the COVID pandemic. And one of the things that I was extremely concerned about was the COVID vaccine in kids. Obviously, I'm a physician, but I'm also a mom of three.

And one thing that I was really concerned about was we saw that the risk in kids, specifically healthy kids, was very low. But what we did see were those rare cases of MIS-C or those inflammatory conditions that happened after the fact from the virus.

My concern was if we are now giving them a vaccine, which is a high dose, which is meant to cause an inflammatory reaction, are we going to actually incite MIS-C in a healthy kid who probably wouldn't have even gotten it if they had gotten the infection? And so he and I went back and forth with this for a while.

We even published, co-published an article together in the New England Journal of Medicine. Yeah. No, Wall Street Journal. Sorry. It's been a long day. Wall Street Journal essentially breaking down the risks of a COVID infection in a kid as well as the vaccine risks in the kid.

And from what I saw was the risk was so low from a COVID infection, the risk was still low from the COVID vaccine from the data that Pfizer and Moderna had given us at that time, you know, it was probably equivocal, but if it's an equivocal risk, why would you risk it at all? Why wouldn't you just, we knew at that point, everyone was gonna be infected with the virus.

So you might as well just go with that, have that risk. So I was always against vaccinating healthy young kids. I'm very happy to see at this point that they are removing it from the recommended vaccine schedule So I want to talk to you, McCary, a little bit more.

And actually, he's sitting down with me next week and we're going to have an in-depth conversation about what led to the actual removal. Was it a reevaluation of the data and showing that it wasn't, you know, it should never have been on the market to begin with? Or do they have new data that we are not privy to yet? And so that's what I want to see.

I think we had that data years ago. We did have that data. We had the safety signals. We had Israel that were warning us. well before we even approved it in kids. So we had the data. Why did it take so long? Is it just because an administration changed or really did something new come up? And I think I know the answer to that, but I want to ask him.

Panic Attack. So I wrote this during COVID. I actually started writing it in May of 2020. And one of the things, you know, it's always funny when you do something and then now four years later, it's like, oh, look at that. I said that I was right. It's nice when you get proven right on certain things. I have a whole chapter about breaking down the viral genetic structure and

and how it made the most sense that it was a human modified virus and the most plausible cause of the origin was an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And so it has just been wonderful to see that play out over the last few years because I really broke it down to the granular level on why this made sense then.

And then on top of it, I talked about how essentially the mask mandates All the other stuff that we did from a data perspective, it really didn't move the needle much at all.

And how moving forward, we have to be very wary about these mandates and everything else that comes along with it because we completely botched this pandemic and unfortunately have created a massive environment of mistrust when it comes to public health. Look what's happening right now.

You have the secretary of HHS, the commissioner of FDA and the NIH director, Dr. Bhattacharya, all coming out and saying, you know, healthy kids don't need this vaccine. But now you have societies going against them. And we have a lot of back and forth and we do not have a cohesive approach.

I was just going to say that we saw this as early as Delta, that people were getting their boosters and they were still getting infected three months later. I mean, at that point, what are we doing? We cannot booster into perpetuity and still be doing that when this virus is just continuing to change and mutate and becoming less and less severe. It's enough.

Well, I do think that that's something that's being studied. I think the FDA at this point wants that essentially because people trust that a little bit more. But you're absolutely right. I mean, the spike protein, I mean, we're starting to see studies now that they continue to say, oh, well, you know, the infection causes the strokes and maybe even some delayed Parkinson's disease.

Oh, but by the way, there are some small case reports showing that the spike protein from the vaccine may be leading to this as well. And so they have to really just take a pause and acknowledge what's happening right now. What are these boosters doing? I mean, the good news is most people aren't getting the boosters despite them being recommended. And they do help some people, maybe.

They do decrease hospitalizations in a very certain subset of people based on the available data. Yeah.

So you can find me on X. You can find me on Instagram. I also just launched a new podcast, Wellness Unmasked with Dr. Nicole Sapphire on iHeartRadio. So I hope you check it out. It's all things health and wellness and kind of debunking things.

Thanks for having me.

As always, thanks for having me on.

Well, hello, I'm an oncologic imager. Of course, I disagree with the USPSTF on just about everything that they put out. And I have a bone to pick with you, actually. You know, I heard you and Adam, you talked about me. You said that I came out and said, well, you know, not every 72-year-old is being screened for prostate cancer, which, by the way, is a true statement.

100%.

That's not all I said, though. I said, but it doesn't pass my sniff test that President Biden wasn't being screened for prostate cancer. Because if we looked at his medical records and let's let's be honest, they weren't the most open with us when it came to the former president's health, whether it was his cognitive health, his physical health.

He was still being screened for colon cancer with colonoscopies. He was getting skin check for skin cancer screening. I mean, yeah. Prostate cancer is much more common in a man of his age than colon cancer. So to say that he's still getting screening colonoscopies and not a PSA, I don't buy it.

But in 2019, they said he was being treated for BPH, benign prostatic hyperplasia, which means that he had a prostate test. He had a PSA test. And I doubt it was five years earlier, because if you're actively being treated for BPH in 2019, how are they monitoring that just based on symptoms? I mean, maybe. But come on, let's be honest.

He was the vice president and then he was there some time and then he was the president. Of course, he was getting a PSA test. I don't buy it. I think that they just were not disclosing things to the public, just like we were demanding over and over. I mean, we had many conversations about this, about his cognitive health.

There's no way that someone at his age during an annual exam, especially with his symptoms, his obvious symptoms, they weren't doing some sort of cognitive evaluation. There's just no way. No good, you know, ethical doctor wouldn't be doing that.

Yeah, you know, his position, I think, started with him in 2006 or 2009 when he was vice president. They had a business relationship as well, working on some foundation. So it wasn't purely doctor patient. I mean, hello, where are the medical ethics here at all? I mean, I can't even accept like a bouquet of flowers from some of my patients when I find their cancer. But now you're going to.

do a foundation and stuff together. So there are obviously were some red flags there. I don't really know. I'm not going to say that he's a bad physician. He may be just, you know, keeping HIPAA, keeping things, you know, medical privacy.

And it was really up to the president to disclose his medical history because the reality is medically, ethically speaking, I don't think that that physician could be forthcoming with us if the president said he can't.

I mean, that's a great question. I mean, do presidents actually have to submit their annual exam to us every year? They don't have to. They just do. And of course, I mean, you've read these. I mean, we read them every year because we're asked about to comment on them. And they're full of like hyperbole and bombastic claims. And it's like, oh, look at how strong our president is.

And I mean, that's a great thing. But when it comes to a medical doctor reviewing a medical chart, I mean, this is not a medical chart by any stretch of the imagination.

The Goldwater rule, you're not allowed to comment on a patient unless you've treated them personally. It's like, oh, stop it.

Or if the president develops a shuffling gait, I think we can comment on that too.

Well, from what I understand, they essentially said he had some symptoms. They didn't disclose exactly what they were, but I'm sure we can imagine some sort of urinary symptoms. Or maybe he had bone pain. We don't really know. They didn't tell us. But it elicited examination of his prostate because he said after he presented with symptoms, he looked at his prostate. What was that?

Did they do a PSA? Did they see it was elevated? Did they do a rectal exam? Because they mentioned a nodule. Did they feel it? Did they do a prostate MRI? How did they diagnose the metastatic disease, by the way? I mean, you don't just go from a raised PSA to a prostatic biopsy to now diagnosing metastatic disease unless there's evidence of advanced disease.

One thing that I found very interesting, Drew, is He had MRIs throughout his tenure of presidency of his spine. At least they say that when they were evaluating his degenerative change of the spine, there was no nerve compression, which leads me to think they were looking at the soft tissues with an MRI, not just an X-ray.

So therefore, if there had been metastatic disease earlier on, at least in the spine, which is a very common location for metastatic disease, we would have seen something as the last one we heard about was 2024. But he did get diagnosed with COVID in the summer of 2024. And you remember right after that, about a week later is when he dropped out of the presidential campaign.

Now we know that every time that a president got COVID, they got a CT chest, whether it was indicated or not. So did he get a CT chest during the summer? And maybe they saw something on that examination and that prompted maybe a metastatic disease workup at that time. That's the only thing that has me as a maybe.

Like, can we just call it what it is? There's no way he was not. He was being treated for BPH in 2019. He was getting a PSA. But the thing is, they said he was being treated for BPH. Maybe he was taking like finasteride or some of the other medications to treat the BPH.

Right. So if he was taking finasteride, then maybe he had an artificially low PSA. And so they were still checking them because I know they had to have been. I understand they said they weren't, but I don't know. So maybe it was artificially low.

I mean, it's certainly speculative. I mean, anything is possible. I mean, you certainly can see, as you know, obviously, dizziness, that brain fog. I mean, maybe it did exacerbate some of it. I also think that he, aside from his prostate cancer diagnosis, has a form of dementia and he was rapidly declining. I mean, I think that was just obvious. So I'm not sure I'm going to put it all together.

I think they actually may be separate. But I do agree with you. I think that he had prostate cancer. He probably didn't have it 10 years ago, which I hear some people say because it was a Gleason 9 that is quite aggressive. I'm sure it moved a bit faster than that, but it certainly didn't pop up in the last couple of months. I'm certain he had it while he was president.

And if he wasn't having a PSA test, but he was still having a colonoscopy, that makes no sense whatsoever. And I think the physician should be questioned as to whether they're practicing medicine appropriately.