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This is a positive feature in a periodical that Donald Trump has consistently praised – with one exception. The magazine's cover photo, he stated, ""could be the worst ever".

Time's praise to Donald Trump's part in brokering a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was presented alongside a photograph of the president shot from a low angle and with the sun behind his head.

The result, the president asserts, is ""extremely poor".

"Time Magazine wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the photo may be the most awful ever", the president posted on Truth Social.

“They removed 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 never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a extremely poor picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”

The president has expressed obvious his ambition to appear on the cover of Time and achieved this multiple times in the past year. The preoccupation has reached Trump’s golf clubs – years ago, the magazine asked him to remove mocked up covers shown in several of his venues.

This issue's photograph was captured by a photographer for a news agency at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.

Its angle was unflattering to the president's jawline and throat – an opportunity that California governor Newsom seized, with his communications team posting a modified photo with the problematic part obscured.

{The hostages from Israel in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan, in exchange for a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal may become a defining accomplishment of Trump's second term, and it may represent a key shift for that part of the world.

Simultaneously, a support for his portrayal has emerged from a surprising origin: the director of information at the Russian foreign ministry stepped in to condemn the "damaging" photo selection.

"It’s astonishing: a photograph reveals far more about those who selected it than about the individual pictured. Only disturbed individuals, people obsessed with malice and resentment –possibly even deviants – could have chosen such a photo", the official posted on Telegram.

Considering the favorable images of President Biden that the same publication used on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the situation is self-revealing for Time", she said.

The explanation for the president's inquiries – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – may be something to do with artistically representing a impression of strength stated by Carly Earl, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

The photograph technically is well-executed," she says. "They selected this photo because they wanted Trump to look impressive. Looking up at a person gives a sense of their importance and his expression actually looks contemplative and almost slightly angelic. It’s not often you see pictures of him in such a serene moment – the picture feels tender."

His hair seems to vanish because the sunlight behind him has bleached that section of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. Although the article's title complements his facial expression in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the individual in question."

Nobody enjoys being shot from underneath, and while all of the conceptual elements of the image are quite powerful, the appearance are unflattering."

The Guardian approached the periodical for feedback.