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It is a glowing story in a periodical that the president has consistently praised – but for one catch. The cover picture, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time magazine's paean to Donald Trump's part in facilitating a ceasefire in Gaza, featured on its November 10 cover, was accompanied by a photograph of Trump shot from a low angle while the sun shining from the back.

The result, he says, is ""terrible".

"Time wrote a relatively good story about me, but the photo may be the lowest quality in history", he shared on Truth Social.

“They removed my hair, and then had an object hovering on top of my head that looked like a hovering tiara, but an very tiny one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a extremely poor picture, and merits public condemnation. Why did they do this, and why?”

The president has expressed clear his wish to be pictured on Time magazine's front page and accomplished it multiple times in the past year. The preoccupation has reached Trump’s golf clubs – previously, the publication requested to remove fake issues shown in some of his properties.

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

The perspective did no favours for the president's jawline and throat – an opening that the governor of California Newsom seized, with his communications team tweeting a version with the problematic part obscured.

{The living Israeli hostages in Gaza have been released under the initial stage of Donald Trump's peace plan, alongside a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal might turn into a major success of Trump's second term, and it could mark a key shift for the Middle East.

At the same time, a defence of the president’s appearance has come from an unexpected source: the communications chief at the Russian foreign ministry came forward to denounce the "self-incriminating" photo selection.

It's amazing: a photograph says more about those who picked it than about the subject. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and resentment –possibly even deviants – could have picked this picture", the official wrote on the messaging platform.

"And given the complimentary photos of President Biden that the same publication featured on the front, despite his physical infirmity, the situation is self-revealing for the publication", she said.

The explanation for the president's inquiries – what did the editors intend, and why? – could be related to innovatively depicting a sense of power according to a picture editor, a media professional.

"The actual photo itself is professionally taken," she says. "They chose this shot because they wanted trump to look commanding. Staring up at someone evokes a feeling of their importance and his expression actually looks contemplative and almost somewhat divine. It’s not often you see images of the president in such a peaceful state – the image has a softness to it."

Trump’s hair looks erased because the rear illumination has bleached that section of the image, producing a glowing aura, she adds. Although the feature's heading complements Trump’s expression in the image, "you can’t always please the individual in question."

"No one likes being photographed from below, and although all of the thematic components of the image are quite powerful, the appearance are not complimentary."

The publication reached out to the periodical for comment.