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It is a positive feature in a periodical that the president has frequently admired – but for one catch. The cover picture, he stated, ""could be the worst ever".

Time magazine's paean to Trump's role in facilitating a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was presented alongside a image of Trump shot from a low angle and with the sun positioned behind him.

The outcome, Trump claims, is "super bad".

"Time wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the picture may be the most awful ever", he shared on his preferred network.

“They eliminated my hair, and then had an object hovering on top of my head that appeared as a suspended coronet, but an extremely small one. Quite bizarre! I consistently avoided taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a extremely poor picture, and deserves to be called out. What is their intention, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown no secret of his desire to appear on the cover of Time and accomplished it four times last year. This fixation has reached Trump’s golf clubs – previously, the editors demanded to remove mocked up covers exhibited in a few of his establishments.

This issue's photograph was captured by a photographer for a news agency at the White House on 5 October.

Its angle highlighted negatively his chin and neck area – an opportunity that the governor of California Gavin Newsom did not miss, with the governor's office tweeting a version with the criticized section blurred.

{The Israeli captives detained in Gaza have been freed under the first phase of Trump's ceasefire agreement, alongside a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The arrangement could be a signature achievement of the president's renewed tenure, and it may represent a pivotal moment for the Middle East.

Simultaneously, a defence of the president’s appearance has come from unusual quarters: the communications chief at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to denounce the "self-incriminating" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a image says more about those who selected it than about the individual pictured. Only sick people, people driven by hatred and resentment –perhaps even perverts – could have chosen such a photo", she posted on the messaging platform.

Considering the favorable images of President Biden that that magazine displayed on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the case is self-damaging for the publication", she noted.

The response to Trump’s questions – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – might involve innovatively depicting a impression of strength according to Carly Earl, an Australian publication's photo editor.

"The actual photo itself is professionally taken," she explains. "They picked this image because they wanted Trump to look heroic. Looking up at a person evokes a feeling of their majesty and the president's visage actually looks contemplative and almost somewhat divine. It's rare you see photos of Trump in such a serene moment – the image has a softness to it."

The president's hair seems to vanish because the sunlight behind him has overexposed that part of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. And, while the feature's heading pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "you can’t always please the subject matter."

"No one likes being photographed from below, and while all of the conceptual elements of the image are quite powerful, the appearance are not complimentary."

The news outlet approached the magazine for comment.