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It is a glowing article in a periodical that the president has long exalted – but for one catch. The front-page image, he stated, ""might be the most terrible in history".

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

The result, Trump claims, is ""terrible".

"Time wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the picture may be the most awful ever", Trump wrote on his preferred network.

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an remarkably little one. Quite bizarre! I always disliked taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a super bad picture, and merits public condemnation. What is their intention, and why?”

Trump has made obvious his ambition to feature on Time magazine's front page and did so four times last year. This fixation has made it as far as his golf courses – previously, the magazine asked him to remove mocked up covers on display at a few of his establishments.

The latest edition’s photo was taken by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the presidential residence on 5 October.

Its angle did no favours for the president's jawline and throat – a chance that California governor Newsom did not miss, with his communications team sharing an altered image with the problematic part pixelated.

{The hostages from Israel detained in Gaza have been liberated under the initial stage of Donald Trump's peace plan, alongside a release of Palestinian detainees. The deal may become a defining accomplishment of Trump's second term, and it could mark a key shift for the region.

Simultaneously, a defense of his portrayal has been offered by unusual quarters: the director of information at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs stepped in to denounce the "revealing" image choice.

"It’s astonishing: a image reveals far more about those who picked it than about the individual pictured. Only disturbed individuals, people obsessed with malice and hatred –maybe even degenerates – could have selected such an image", the official wrote on her social channel.

Considering the favorable images of President Biden that the periodical displayed on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the case is self-damaging for the magazine", she added.

The answer to his queries – what did the editors intend, and why? – may be something to do with creatively capturing a sense of power says Carly Earl, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The photograph technically is professionally taken," she says. "They selected this photo because they wanted trump to look impressive. Staring up at someone gives a sense of their grandeur and the president's visage actually looks thoughtful and almost a bit ethereal. It's rare you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

Trump’s hair looks erased because the sunlight behind him has bleached that section of the image, generating a radiant circle, she adds. Even though the article's title pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the subject matter."

Nobody enjoys being shot from underneath, and while all of the artistic aspects of the image are very strong, the appearance are not flattering."

The news outlet approached the periodical for comment.