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It is a glowing article in a magazine that the president has consistently praised – but for one catch. The magazine's cover photo, the president decreed, ""could be the worst ever".

Time magazine's paean to Donald Trump's part in brokering a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was presented alongside a photo of the president captured from underneath while the sun shining from the back.

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

"Time wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the picture may be the lowest quality in history", Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had an object hovering on top of my head that appeared as a suspended coronet, but an very tiny one. Truly strange! I consistently avoided taking pictures from below viewpoints, but this is a extremely poor picture, and should be criticized. What is their intention, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown clear his wish to appear on the cover of Time and achieved this multiple times in the past year. This fixation has made it as far as the president's resorts – years ago, the magazine asked him to remove fabricated front pages on display at some of his properties.

This issue's photograph was captured by Graeme Sloane for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on October 5.

Its angle did no favours for his chin and neck area – an opening that the governor of California Gavin Newsom seized, with his press office posting a modified photo with the criticized section obscured.

{The living Israeli hostages detained in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan, alongside a release of Palestinian detainees. This agreement may become a major success of his next term, and it might signify a key shift for the Middle East.

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

It's remarkable: a image says more about those who selected it than about the person in it. Only disturbed individuals, people obsessed with malice and hatred –maybe even degenerates – could have chosen such a photo", the official wrote on her social channel.

In light of the positive pictures of President Biden that the same publication displayed on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the situation is self-revealing for Time", she said.

The answer to his queries – what did the editors intend, and why? – might involve innovatively depicting a sense of power according to an imaging expert, a media professional.

"The actual photo 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 majesty and the president's visage actually looks thoughtful and almost somewhat divine. It's uncommon you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the picture feels tender."

His hair looks erased because the light from behind has overexposed that part of the image, creating a halo effect, she adds. Although the story’s headline pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the subject matter."

"No one likes being shot from underneath, and although all of the artistic aspects of the image are highly effective, the aesthetics are not complimentary."

The news outlet approached Time magazine for comment.