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It is a positive article in a magazine that the president has consistently praised – except for one issue. The magazine's cover photo, Trump declared, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time's tribute to Trump's role in brokering a Gaza ceasefire, leading its 10 November issue, was accompanied by a image of Trump shot from a low angle and with the sun behind his head.

The outcome, he says, is "super bad".

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

“They eliminated my hair, and then had an object hovering on top of my head that appeared as a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Truly strange! I consistently avoided taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a terrible picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown obvious his ambition to feature on Time magazine's front page and accomplished it on four occasions in the previous year. The obsession has extended to his golf courses – in 2017, the editors demanded to remove mocked up covers shown in several of his venues.

The latest edition’s photo was shot by a photographer for a news agency at the White House on October 5.

Its angle did no favours for Trump’s chin and neck – an opportunity that the governor of California Gavin Newsom took advantage of, with his press office posting a modified photo with the problematic part blurred.

{The hostages from Israel held in Gaza have been freed under the initial stage of the president's diplomatic initiative, together with a release of Palestinian detainees. The arrangement might turn into a defining accomplishment of the president's renewed tenure, and it may represent a pivotal moment for the Middle East.

At the same time, a defence of the president’s appearance has emerged from unusual quarters: the director of information at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to denounce the "self-incriminating" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a photograph says more about those who picked it than about the person in it. Just unwell persons, people obsessed with malice and animosity –maybe even degenerates – could have picked this picture", Maria Zakharova wrote on the messaging platform.

Considering the favorable images of Biden that the same publication featured on the front, despite his physical infirmity, the story is simply self-incriminating for the publication", she said.

The explanation for Trump’s questions – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – could be related to innovatively depicting a sense of power stated by a picture editor, a media professional.

The photograph technically technically is good," she says. "They chose this shot because they wanted trump to look heroic. Gazing upward creates an impression of their grandeur and Trump’s face actually looks contemplative and almost somewhat divine. It's rare you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the picture feels tender."

Trump’s hair appears to “disappear” because the light from behind has overexposed that part of the image, generating a radiant circle, she explains. And, while the story’s headline complements his facial expression in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the subject matter."

"No one likes being captured from low angles, and even if all of the thematic components of the image are highly effective, the appearance are not flattering."

The news outlet reached out to Time magazine for a statement.