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This is a positive feature in a periodical that the president has long exalted – but for one catch. The front-page image, he stated, "may be the Worst of All Time".

Time's praise to Trump's role in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was paired with a photo of Trump shot from a low angle while the sun behind his head.

The effect, he says, is "super bad".

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

“They eliminated my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that resembled a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Quite bizarre! I always disliked taking pictures from below viewpoints, but this is a extremely poor picture, and deserves to be called out. What is their intention, and why?”

The president has expressed no secret of his desire to appear on Time magazine's front page and achieved this multiple times in the past year. The obsession has extended to his golf courses – years ago, the magazine asked him to remove fabricated front pages on display at some of his properties.

This issue's photograph was taken by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the presidential residence on October 5.

The shot's viewpoint was unflattering to Trump’s chin and neck – an opportunity that California governor Gavin Newsom did not miss, with the governor's office sharing an altered image with the criticized section obscured.

{The hostages from Israel in Gaza have been liberated under the first phase of the president's diplomatic initiative, together with a Palestinian prisoner release. This agreement could be a major success of Trump's second term, and it could mark a key shift for the Middle East.

Simultaneously, a defence of Trump's image has emerged from a surprising origin: the communications chief at the Russian foreign ministry stepped in to condemn the "damaging" photo selection.

It's remarkable: a photograph exposes those who selected it than about the subject. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and animosity –possibly even deviants – could have chosen such a photo", Maria Zakharova shared on the messaging platform.

In light of the positive pictures of President Biden that that magazine displayed on the cover, notwithstanding his health issues, the situation is self-revealing for the publication", she added.

The answer to Trump’s questions – what did the editors intend, and why? – could be related to innovatively depicting a feeling of authority stated by an imaging expert, an Australian publication's photo editor.

"The actual photo itself technically is good," she says. "They picked this image because they wanted the president to look heroic. Gazing upward gives a sense of their importance and Trump’s face actually looks thoughtful and almost a bit ethereal. It's rare you see images of the president in such a serene moment – the image has a softness to it."

Trump’s hair seems to vanish because the sunlight behind him has overexposed that part of the image, creating a halo effect, she explains. Although the article's title marries well with the president's look in the image, "you can’t always please the person photographed."

Nobody enjoys being photographed from below, and even if all of the thematic components of the image are very strong, the appearance are unflattering."

The news outlet reached out to the magazine for comment.