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This is a positive story in a publication that the president has consistently praised – except for one issue. The cover picture, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time's tribute to the president's involvement in facilitating a truce for Gaza, leading its 10 November issue, was paired with a photograph of the president shot from a low angle while the sun behind his head.

The result, the president asserts, is "super bad".

"Time Magazine wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the image may be the lowest quality in history", the president posted on his preferred network.

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that appeared as a suspended coronet, but an very tiny one. Quite bizarre! I always disliked taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. Why did they do this, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown clear his wish to be pictured on Time’s cover and did so on four occasions in the previous year. The obsession has made it as far as Trump’s golf clubs – previously, the publication requested to remove fake issues exhibited in a few of his establishments.

The latest edition’s photo was shot by a photographer for a news agency at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.

The shot's viewpoint did no favours for Trump’s chin and neck – a chance that California governor Newsom seized, with his communications team posting a modified photo with the problematic part pixelated.

{The living Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been freed under the initial stage of Donald Trump's peace plan, in exchange for a Palestinian prisoner release. The deal might turn into a major success of Trump's second term, and it may represent a pivotal moment for the region.

Simultaneously, a defence of Trump's image has come from an unexpected source: the director of information at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs intervened to condemn the "revealing" photo selection.

It's remarkable: a photo reveals far more about those who selected it than about the person in it. Just unwell persons, people driven by hatred and hatred –possibly even deviants – could have chosen such a photo", she wrote on the messaging platform.

In light of the positive pictures of Biden that the same publication featured on the front, despite his physical infirmity, the case is self-damaging for Time", she noted.

The answer to Trump’s questions – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – may be something to do with innovatively depicting a sense of power says a picture editor, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The image itself is well-executed," she explains. "They picked this image because they wanted trump to look impressive. Gazing upward gives a sense of their grandeur and the president's visage actually looks contemplative and almost a bit ethereal. It’s not often you see images of the president in such a serene moment – the image has a softness to it."

His hair looks erased because the light from behind has washed out that area of the image, creating a halo effect, she adds. Even though the story’s headline pairs nicely with his facial expression in the image, "you can’t always please the subject matter."

Few people appreciate being shot from underneath, and although all of the artistic aspects of the image are quite powerful, the visual appeal are not complimentary."

The publication contacted the periodical for comment.