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This is a favorable feature in a magazine that Trump has long exalted – with one exception. The front-page image, he stated, ""could be the worst ever".

Time's tribute to Trump's role in mediating a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was accompanied by a image of Trump shot from a low angle while the sun shining from the back.

The result, the president asserts, is ""terrible".

"The publication wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the image may be the Worst of All Time", Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that resembled a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Quite bizarre! I consistently avoided taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a extremely poor picture, and should be criticized. What is their intention, and why?”

Trump has made obvious his ambition to feature on Time’s cover and achieved this four times last year. The preoccupation has made it as far as Trump’s golf clubs – in 2017, the publication requested to remove fabricated front pages on display at several of his venues.

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

The shot's viewpoint was unflattering to his chin and neck area – an opening that California governor Newsom did not miss, with the governor's office posting a modified photo with the problematic part obscured.

{The Israeli captives held in Gaza have been liberated under the initial stage of Trump's ceasefire agreement, alongside a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal might turn into a defining accomplishment of the president's renewed tenure, and it could mark a strategic turning point for the Middle East.

Simultaneously, a defense of the president’s appearance has come from a surprising origin: the communications chief at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs intervened to denounce the "self-incriminating" photo selection.

It's remarkable: a image exposes those who chose it than about the subject. Only disturbed individuals, people obsessed with malice and resentment –perhaps even perverts – could have selected such an image", she posted on Telegram.

"And given the complimentary photos of Biden that the periodical used on the cover, notwithstanding his health issues, the story is simply self-incriminating for Time", she added.

The answer to his queries – what did the editors intend, and why? – could be related to creatively capturing a sense of power stated by a picture editor, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

The image itself is professionally taken," she explains. "They chose this shot because they wanted Trump to look commanding. Staring up at someone gives a sense of their grandeur and the president's visage actually looks thoughtful and almost somewhat divine. It’s not often you see pictures of him in such a serene moment – the picture feels tender."

Trump’s hair seems to vanish because the light from behind has washed out that area of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. Even though the feature's heading complements the president's look in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the person photographed."

Nobody enjoys being shot from underneath, and even if all of the conceptual elements of the image are very strong, the aesthetics are not flattering."

The Guardian approached the magazine for a statement.