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00:07 Does he, I mean, Zaleski was a comedian.
00:11 He's like a gifted comic actor.
00:13 Does he tell jokes anymore? Does he laugh anymore?
00:18 That part of his personality has really, I wouldn't say disappeared,
00:23 but become much less prominent over the course of the invasion.
00:27 He's taken on the role of a wartime leader.
00:31 He's also tired, I think.
00:33 I see that. His aides talk about that pretty openly.
00:38 They tell him, "Boss, you've got to get some rest."
00:40 He refuses.
00:42 So he doesn't make a lot of time for jokes and chit-chat anymore.
00:46 He did in the beginning. In the beginning, his administration,
00:49 that was a fun group of people to hang around.
00:52 There was a lot of laughter. There was a lot of jokes.
00:54 There was a lot of ironic jokes about the weird trappings of power
01:00 that suddenly they were surrounded by
01:02 because they came from the world of comedy and entertainment
01:04 into the presidential palace.
01:06 It's just a very weird transition.
01:09 It's non-stop. This guy just doesn't rest.
01:12 But he's also human, and it wears you down.
01:16 So his sense of humor has been definitely not the most important victim of this war,
01:22 but one of them.
01:23 His wife said when Zelensky turned 45 years old,
01:27 she said, "You don't smile as much anymore."
01:30 And she wished him for his birthday more reasons to smile.
01:34 So long-winded answer to your question,
01:36 but he's changed a lot in that sense.
01:39 I'd answer with a question for you about Bibi, as they call him,
01:44 Prime Minister Netanyahu,
01:46 an absolutely dominant force in Israeli politics,
01:50 just observing it from a distance.
01:52 What are attitudes toward him, and how are they evolving?
01:56 Do people see him as a strong enough leader to lead Israel through the next crisis?
02:02 I think he's blamed for this.
02:05 He was always Mr. Security.
02:07 He made Israelis feel safe.
02:09 He used to use Hamas.
02:11 "I'm the guy who will stand up to Hamas. I'll beat Hamas," in earlier campaigns.
02:16 Hard to come back from that.
02:18 Yeah, and I think it's understood that he empowered Hamas.
02:23 He found it convenient to have Hamas in the Gaza Strip
02:26 and a rival party, a secular party, the Fatah party, running the West Bank,
02:31 so he could play.
02:32 And that party was willing to negotiate, cooperated with Israel and security,
02:38 in exchange for negotiations toward a state of their own,
02:42 which Netanyahu never wanted to have or give.
02:47 And so he said anybody who wants to stop a two-state solution
02:52 should be helping Hamas, empowering Hamas.
02:54 And he did, allowing Qatar to send in billions of dollars in aid,
03:00 some of which got repurposed for military uses by Hamas,
03:04 and by legitimizing them as the governance in Gaza.
03:09 And meanwhile, he cast himself as the indispensable man,
03:14 but it became clear inside Israel that he was in some ways a party of one,
03:19 even though he headed the Likud party,
03:21 because he's facing these corruption charges, he's literally on trial,
03:26 and he couldn't win a majority in these many elections they were having.
03:30 And the only way he got elected, he got a governing coalition this time,
03:34 was by bringing in these fringe actors, far-right parties and politicians
03:39 who had never been allowed in government.
03:42 And he gave them power.
03:45 And they started this effort to sideline the Supreme Court,
03:49 and they called them reforms,
03:52 that many people in Israel feared would perpetuate,
03:55 basically keep them in power forever.
03:57 And it basically divided Israeli society so profoundly
04:01 that there were protests, weekly protests,
04:04 of tens of thousands of people for months.
04:07 And Israeli reservists, military reservists, who said, "We won't serve.
04:14 The threat to democracy is so great that people have to know that we won't show up."
04:19 Of course they did. It wasn't an actual threat.
04:22 But this division was considered one of the things that weakened readiness.
04:28 And Bibi's taking the hit for that, the poll show.
04:33 Nobody expects Bibi to survive this.
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