Elect Emulating The News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

David gergen. jeffrey lord, and white house and state department official shammia choudary. >> you were in the nixon white house. do you buy the idea that donald trump is implementing his own version of what is known as the madman theory? >> absolutely. and john, please understand. it didn't start with nixon. it goes back a long way. macc machiavelli 500 years ago -- and i do think donald trump embraced the theory. he talks regularly of henry kissinger and kissinger often talks about this of a way of controlling events. i would say couple of words of caution about when it's used. in the nixon ...

Communism. >> madman theory is to basically use unpredictable, seemingly brash, bravado, over-escalation to get the other side to fall off its positions. >> reporter: trump has used similar questions about how he would handle foreign computations. refusing to rule out nuclear weapons. >> i can't take anything off the table. >> reporter: calling for ban on muslims. >> total and complete shut down of muslims entering the united states until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. >> and most recently taking a call from the president of taiwan. a break from with di...

Trump and briefings, the last -- >> i'm going to cut it off right there. guys. thanks so much. don't go far. coming up is the president elect emulating the so called madman theory that fueled richard nixon's foreign policy. nixon's strategy was to keep his enemies guessing and sound like he was willing to go to extremes. sound like someone else we know? that's next the corkscrew spin, flawless... ...his signature move, the flying dutchman. poetry in motion. and there it is, the "baby bird". breathtaking. a sumo wrestler figure skating? surprising. what's not surprising? how much money heather ...

So donald trump's fiercest critics would have you believe the president elect is unhinged. there are others who say mr. trump's seemingly random and statements and not only purpose. b but calculated. elise lavette reports. >> we must as a nation be more unpredictable. >> it is called the madman theory. a term and strategy taken from the playbook of richard nixon. the objective, keep your enemies guessing about your motives, temperament and willingness to go to the extreme. nixon used it to get the north vietnamese to the table by making them think he'd use nuclear weapons to defeat