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It is a favorable story in a magazine that the president has long exalted – except for one issue. The magazine's cover photo, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time magazine's praise to the president's involvement in brokering a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was accompanied by a photograph of the president shot from a low angle and with the sun positioned behind him.

The effect, the president asserts, is "super bad".

"Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the photo may be the most awful ever", he shared on Truth Social.

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had an object hovering on top of my head that resembled a suspended coronet, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and should be criticized. Why did they do this, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown clear his wish to feature on Time magazine's front page and achieved this on four occasions in the previous year. The preoccupation has extended to Trump’s golf clubs – in 2017, the publication requested to remove fabricated front pages on display at some of his properties.

This issue's photograph was shot by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.

The shot's viewpoint did no favours for his chin and neck area – a chance that California governor Newsom seized, with his communications team tweeting a version with the offending area obscured.

{The hostages from Israel detained in Gaza have been freed under the initial stage of Donald Trump's peace plan, alongside a Palestinian prisoner release. The deal might turn into a signature achievement of his next term, and it may represent a strategic turning point for the Middle East.

Simultaneously, a defense of the president’s appearance has emerged from an unexpected source: the director of information at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs stepped in to condemn the "self-incriminating" picture decision.

It's remarkable: a image says more about those who selected it than about the individual pictured. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and resentment –perhaps even perverts – could have selected such an image", the official wrote on Telegram.

"And given the complimentary photos of President Biden that the periodical displayed on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the story is simply self-incriminating for the magazine", she noted.

The explanation for his queries – why did they choose this, and why? – might involve artistically representing a sense of power says an imaging expert, a media professional.

The image itself technically is good," she notes. "They picked this image because they wanted Trump to look impressive. Gazing upward gives a sense of their majesty and his expression actually looks contemplative and almost a bit ethereal. It’s not often you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the picture feels tender."

His hair looks erased because the rear illumination has overexposed that part of the image, producing a glowing aura, she explains. Even though the article's title pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "you can’t always please the subject matter."

Nobody enjoys being captured from low angles, and although all of the conceptual elements of the image are very strong, the aesthetics are not flattering."

The publication reached out to the periodical for feedback.