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It is a glowing story in a magazine that the president has frequently admired – with one exception. The magazine's cover photo, Trump declared, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time magazine's tribute to Donald Trump's part in mediating a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was presented alongside a photo of Trump taken from below and with the sun behind his head.

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

"The publication wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the picture may be the most awful ever", he shared on his preferred network.

“They removed my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that appeared as a suspended coronet, but an very tiny one. Truly strange! I never liked taking pictures from below viewpoints, but this is a super bad picture, and should be criticized. What are they doing, and why?”

The president has expressed clear his wish to appear on Time magazine's front page and achieved this multiple times in the past year. The preoccupation has extended to Trump’s golf clubs – in 2017, the publication requested to remove fabricated front pages exhibited in some of his properties.

The most recent cover image was captured by a photographer for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on 5 October.

Its angle did no favours for the president's jawline and throat – an opportunity that the governor of California Gavin Newsom took advantage of, with his press office tweeting a version with the problematic part blurred.

{The living Israeli hostages detained in Gaza have been liberated under the initial stage of Trump's ceasefire agreement, alongside a Palestinian prisoner release. The deal might turn into a defining accomplishment of his next term, and it could mark a strategic turning point for the region.

At the same time, a defence of his portrayal has emerged from unusual quarters: the director of information at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to criticise the "self-incriminating" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a image reveals far more about those who selected it than about the person in it. Only sick people, people filled with spite and resentment –maybe even degenerates – could have selected such an image", the official shared on her social channel.

"And given the complimentary photos of President Biden that that magazine used on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the situation is self-revealing for the publication", she noted.

The explanation for his queries – what did the editors intend, and why? – may be something to do with artistically representing a impression of strength says a picture editor, a media professional.

The image itself is professionally taken," she notes. "They selected this photo because they wanted the president to look heroic. Gazing upward evokes a feeling of their importance and Trump’s face actually looks reflective and almost slightly angelic. It's rare you see pictures of him in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

Trump’s hair seems to vanish because the sunlight behind him has bleached that section of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. And, while the article's title marries well 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 very strong, the visual appeal are unflattering."

The publication contacted Time magazine for a statement.