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This is a glowing article in a periodical that the president has consistently praised – but for one catch. The cover picture, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time magazine's paean to Trump's role in mediating a ceasefire in Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was accompanied by a image of Trump shot from a low angle while the sun behind his head.

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

"Time wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time", he shared on his social media platform.

“They eliminated my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that appeared as a hovering tiara, but an remarkably little one. Quite bizarre! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What is their intention, and why?”

The president has expressed obvious his ambition to appear on Time magazine's front page and accomplished it multiple times in the past year. This fixation has reached the president's resorts – in 2017, the editors demanded to remove mocked up covers on display at some of his properties.

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

The perspective did no favours for Trump’s chin and neck – a chance that California governor Gavin Newsom took advantage of, with his communications team sharing an altered image with the problematic part pixelated.

{The Israeli captives held in Gaza have been freed under the opening part of Trump's ceasefire agreement, in exchange for a release of Palestinian detainees. The arrangement could be a signature achievement of the president's renewed tenure, and it could mark a strategic turning point for the region.

Meanwhile, a defence of his portrayal has been offered by unusual quarters: the communications chief at Moscow's diplomatic office came forward to condemn the "damaging" photo selection.

"It’s astonishing: a photo says more about those who chose it than about the subject. Only disturbed individuals, people driven by hatred and resentment –perhaps even perverts – could have chosen such a photo", she shared on Telegram.

In light of the positive pictures of Biden that the periodical displayed on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the case is self-damaging for Time", she said.

The response to his queries – what did the editors intend, and why? – might involve innovatively depicting a feeling of authority according to an imaging expert, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The photograph technically is professionally taken," she says. "They chose this shot because they wanted trump to look heroic. Staring up at someone creates an impression of their majesty and the president's visage actually looks thoughtful and almost somewhat divine. It's uncommon you see pictures of him in such a calm instance – the photo appears gentle."

The president's hair appears to “disappear” because the light from behind has overexposed that part of the image, generating a radiant circle, she says. Even though the article's title complements his facial expression in the image, "you can’t always please the person photographed."

Nobody enjoys being photographed from below, and even if all of the conceptual elements of the image are quite powerful, the visual appeal are not flattering."

The news outlet contacted the magazine for a statement.