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It is a favorable story in a magazine that the president has frequently admired – except for one issue. The magazine's cover photo, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time magazine's tribute to Trump's role in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, leading its 10 November issue, was paired with a image of Trump taken from below and with the sun behind his head.

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

"Time Magazine wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the image may be the lowest quality in history", he shared on his social media platform.

“My hair was ‘disappeared’, and then there was something floating my head that appeared as a suspended diadem, but very tiny. Truly strange! I have always hated being photographed from below, but this is a super bad image, and it deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown obvious his ambition to appear on Time’s cover and did so four times last year. This fixation has reached his golf courses – years ago, the magazine asked him to remove fake issues on display at a few of his establishments.

The most recent cover image was captured by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the White House on the fifth of October.

Its angle did no favours for the president's jawline and throat – an opportunity that the governor of California Newsom took advantage of, with his communications team tweeting a version with the problematic part obscured.

{The Israeli captives detained in Gaza have been released under the opening part of the president's diplomatic initiative, in exchange for a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal could be a defining accomplishment of his next term, and it may represent a strategic turning point for the Middle East.

At the same time, a defense of the president’s appearance has emerged from unusual quarters: the director of information at Moscow's diplomatic office came forward to denounce the "self-incriminating" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a photograph exposes those who selected it than about the person in it. Only disturbed individuals, people filled with spite and hatred –possibly even deviants – could have selected such an image", Maria Zakharova shared on Telegram.

"And given the complimentary photos of Biden that that magazine used on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the story is simply self-incriminating for Time", she noted.

The response to Trump’s questions – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – could be related to artistically representing a impression of strength says Carly Earl, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

"The actual photo itself technically is good," she explains. "They picked this image because they wanted trump to look commanding. Looking up at a person evokes a feeling of their importance and his expression actually looks reflective and almost slightly angelic. It's uncommon you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the picture feels tender."

Trump’s hair seems to vanish because the rear illumination has overexposed that part of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. And, while the story’s headline marries well with Trump’s expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the person photographed."

"No one likes being photographed from below, and even if all of the artistic aspects of the image are highly effective, the aesthetics are unflattering."

The publication reached out to the magazine for feedback.