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This is a favorable article in a periodical that the president has long exalted – with one exception. The magazine's cover photo, Trump declared, "may be the Worst of All Time".

Time's paean to Trump's role in facilitating a Gaza ceasefire, leading its 10 November issue, was presented alongside a photo of Trump taken from below and with the sun positioned behind him.

The outcome, he says, is ""extremely poor".

"The publication wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the photo may be the Worst of All Time", Trump wrote on his preferred network.

“My hair was ‘disappeared’, and then there was an object above my head that seemed like a hovering crown, but extremely small. Truly strange! I have never liked being photographed from below, but this is a awful image, and it deserves to be called out. What is their goal, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown clear his wish to feature on Time’s cover and did so on four occasions in the previous year. The preoccupation has made it as far as his golf courses – previously, the magazine asked him to remove fake issues exhibited in some of his properties.

The most recent cover image was captured by a photographer for Bloomberg at the White House on October 5.

The shot's viewpoint was unflattering to the president's jawline and throat – a chance that the governor of California Newsom did not miss, with his communications team posting a modified photo with the problematic part obscured.

{The Israeli captives in Gaza have been freed under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan, in exchange for a freeing of Palestinian inmates. This agreement may become a major success of Trump's second term, and it may represent a key shift for the region.

At the same time, a defence of Trump's image has come from an unexpected source: the communications chief at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs stepped in to criticise the "damaging" picture decision.

It's amazing: a photo says more about those who chose it than about the subject. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and hatred –maybe even degenerates – could have selected such an image", she shared on the messaging platform.

In light of the positive pictures of President Biden that the same publication featured on the front, even with his age-related challenges, the story is simply self-incriminating for Time", she added.

The response to Trump’s questions – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – might involve innovatively depicting a sense of power according to an imaging expert, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

The image itself is well-executed," she says. "They chose this shot because they wanted Trump to look commanding. Looking up at a person evokes a feeling of their importance and the president's visage 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 appears to “disappear” because the rear illumination has bleached that section of the image, generating a radiant circle, she adds. Even though the article's title complements his facial expression in the image, "you can’t always please the person photographed."

Few people appreciate being photographed from below, and while all of the artistic aspects of the image are very strong, the appearance are unflattering."

The publication reached out to the magazine for a statement.