From America with love: Trump and Putin shake hands for the second day in a row after continuing tradition started by Bill Clinton by wearing blue Vietnamese silk shirts to APEC conference
- It's a tradition for host countries to choose matching garments for world leaders to wear at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit
- This year the Vietnamese picked a blue silk shirt, and Donald Trump ditched his signature suit and tie in favor of the traditional garment
- Past years have seen presidents and prime ministers endure Chilean ponchos, Indonesian batik shirts and Chinese jackets that looked like Star Trek uniforms
- Trump and Vladimir Putin shook hands Friday as photographers shot pictures of more than 20 heads of state
- On Saturday the two presidents shook hands a second time after Trump arrived at the APEC leaders' meeting
- Trump made a beeline for Putin when he entered the room, and Putin stood to greet him; Trump did most of the talking but paused to listen to Vlad at one point
- Trump and Putin also spoke briefly as they arrived for the formal 'family photo' of all the leaders
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin shook hands Saturday in Da Nang, Vietnam for the second time in two days during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit.
Trump entered the summit meeting room and walked straight to his Russian counterpart, who was already seated at the room's giant round table.
Putin stood and the two shook hands and spoke briefly, with Trump smiling and doing most of the talking.
Later, the two heads of state chatted before posing for a 'family photo' with all the other presidents and prime ministers.
The two presidents stood next to each other Friday night for a less formal group photo, shaking hands before waving at onlookers as shutters snapped.
Like every other world leader in attendance, Trump and Putin continued one of the annual summit's odder traditions Friday night, ditching neckties and dark suits in favor of matching blue silk shirts.
Trump is rarely photographed in anything other than a suit or a golf shirt. On Saturday he was back to his usual sartorial formality, wearing a dark suit with a solid red tie.
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All the presidents and prime ministers at the Da Nang event played along with the blue silk shirts on Friday, although Putin upstaged Trump by wearing a dress shirt and tie that was visible underneath his traditional 'ao dai.'
Trump, like everyone else, went open-neck casual.
Vietnam President Trần Đại Quang's team chose the garments, a privilege of host countries that dates back to Bill Clinton at the 1993 APEC summit in Seattle.
That year Clinton gave heads of state matching leather bomber jackets, and some actually wore them.
A year later Indonesia picked up the idea, asking participants to wear traditional patterned batik shirts that some in the U.S. compared to 1960s upholstery.
It could have been worse for Trump: George W. Bush chuckled along with the crowd as he posed in a red woven Chilean poncho in 2008 at the APEC arrival ceremony.
And in Australia the year before, outback raincoats were the order of the day.
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Putin and Barack Obama were the only leaders since Clinton's launch to take a break from the tradition.
Obama told world leaders in Hawaii six years ago that they didn't have to play along.
Days after joking that he might pass out 'flowered shirts and grass skirts,' Obama explained that he 'I got rid of the Hawaiian shirts because I looked at pictures of some of the previous APEC meetings and some of the garb that had appeared previously, and I thought this may be a tradition that we might want to break,'
'I suggested to leaders – we gave them a shirt, and if they wanted to wear the shirt, I promise you it would have been fine. But I didn't hear a lot of complaints about us breaking precedent on that one.'
In 2014 he endured a wine-colored jacket in China that drew comparisons to Captain Jean-Luc Picard's uniform in 'Star Trek: The New Generation.'
The White House said as President Trump arrived in Vietnam on Friday that a highly anticipated formal meeting between him and his Russian counterpart would not be on either leader's schedule.
'Regarding a Putin meeting, there was never a meeting confirmed, and there will not be one that takes place due to scheduling conflicts on both sides,' Trump's press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One.
'There is no formal meeting or anything scheduled for them.'
'Now, they’re going to be in the same place,' she allowed. 'Are they going to bump into each other and say hello? Certainly possible and likely.'
'But in terms of a scheduled, formal meeting, there’s not one on the calendar and we don’t anticipate that there will be one,' Sanders said.
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