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It is a glowing story in a magazine that Trump has frequently admired – with one exception. The front-page image, Trump declared, ""could be the worst ever".

Time's tribute to Donald Trump's part in mediating a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was paired with a photograph of Trump taken from below and with the sun positioned behind him.

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

"Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the photo may be the lowest quality in history", Trump wrote on his social media platform.

“They eliminated my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that resembled a floating crown, but an very tiny one. Quite bizarre! I always disliked taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a terrible picture, and merits public condemnation. What are they doing, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown clear his wish to feature on Time magazine's front page and did so multiple times in the past year. This fixation has reached his golf courses – previously, the magazine asked him to remove fabricated front pages on display at some of his properties.

The most recent cover image was shot by Graeme Sloane for Bloomberg at the White House on the fifth of October.

Its angle highlighted negatively his chin and neck area – an opening that California governor Gavin Newsom took advantage of, with the governor's office posting a modified photo with the criticized section blurred.

{The Israeli captives in Gaza have been released under the initial stage of the president's diplomatic initiative, alongside a release of Palestinian detainees. The arrangement could be a major success of the president's renewed tenure, and it could mark a pivotal moment for that part of the world.

At the same time, a defence of Trump's image has been offered by unusual quarters: the director of information at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to condemn the "damaging" image choice.

"It’s astonishing: a photo says more about those who chose it than about the person in it. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and animosity –maybe even degenerates – could have picked this picture", she posted on the messaging platform.

Considering the favorable images of President Biden that the periodical displayed on the cover, notwithstanding his health issues, the story is simply self-incriminating for the magazine", she added.

The response to the president's inquiries – what did the editors intend, and why? – could be related to creatively capturing a sense of power according to an imaging expert, a media professional.

The image itself is professionally taken," she says. "They chose this shot because they wanted Trump to look heroic. Gazing upward gives a sense of their majesty and his expression actually looks contemplative and almost somewhat divine. It's uncommon you see images of the president in such a serene moment – the picture feels tender."

The president's hair seems to vanish because the light from behind has washed out that area of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. Even though the story’s headline marries well with his facial expression in the image, "you can’t always please the person photographed."

Nobody enjoys being photographed from below, and while all of the artistic aspects of the image are highly effective, the aesthetics are not flattering."

The news outlet reached out to the magazine for comment.