Volodymyr Zelensky appears in the surviving excerpts of The Bob Zadek Show only as a party to the 2019 Ukraine phone call, discussed on a single episode about impeachment. The excerpts supply no biography, no account of his career before or after the call, and no statement by or about him beyond his position as the person Donald Trump asked to investigate the Bidens.
The Ukraine phone call and motive
The episode “Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching?” turns to the call late, under the heading “The Ukraine Phone Call and Motive,” with Bob Zadek noting that only a few minutes remained. Zadek describes it as the phone call that could bring down a president, calling it the world’s most perfect phone call, and characterizes the issue as Trump’s motive — that he sought to benefit himself by having Zelensky investigate the Bidens. On Zadek’s account, the accusation was that Trump did something and his motives were soiled, his motives were bad. Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching? (2019)
Zadek then put a hypothetical to his guest, Gene Healy. He asked him to assume that Trump had some evidence that Vice President Biden was guilty of treason, and that Biden was also a possible Democratic candidate for president; Trump says he has the son of a gun and asks Zelensky to investigate and report what he can about the possible treasonous act. In the hypothetical, Biden is also a possible presidential opponent, and Zadek described Trump as compelled to ask Zelensky for help.
Healy rejected the framing. He said Zadek was answering his own hypothetical by stipulating that Trump was compelled — that would not be the way a normal investigation would ever work. Taking Biden out of it, he said, it does not go at that level: if there were evidence that Joe Biden committed treason, it would be handled by prosecutors of the Justice Department, not by Donald Trump in a diplomatic meeting. When Zadek pressed whether Trump’s conduct as described would be impeachable, Healy said no in that hypothetical, then offered one of his own. Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching? (2019)
Healy’s counter-hypothetical had Trump ask Zelensky to license a Trump Towers in Kiev, with military aid held up for that purpose. That, Healy said, people would recognize as a corrupt abuse of office. He posed the question the two hypotheticals were meant to isolate: which is closer to what actually happened on that phone call and the surrounding events — Biden committing treason, or Trump asking for a Trump Towers? Zadek’s response was that the show had given listeners two impossible-to-reconcile hypotheticals, which would leave them more confused than before. He then closed the segment, thanking Healy for his book and for helping sort through what is right and what is wrong in impeachment. Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching? (2019)
Across episodes
Only “Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching?” touches on Zelensky in these excerpts.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Zelensky’s title, his country’s institutions, his electoral history, or anything he said on the call or afterward. They do not identify the aid that was held up beyond Healy’s hypothetical use of it, nor any statute, committee, or vote connected to the call. The only facts the sources give are the request attributed to Trump, the competing readings of its motive, and the hypotheticals the two speakers built around it.