It is a positive story in a magazine that Trump has frequently admired – but for one catch. The front-page image, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".
Time magazine's paean to the president's involvement in facilitating a Gaza ceasefire, leading its 10 November issue, was presented alongside a photograph of the president captured from underneath while the sun behind his head.
The outcome, the president asserts, is ""extremely poor".
"The publication wrote a relatively good story about me, but the image may be the most awful ever", he shared on Truth Social.
“My hair was obscured, and then there was something floating my head that looked like a floating crown, but quite miniature. Really weird! I have consistently disliked being photographed from below, but this is a super bad image, and it merits criticism. Why did they choose this, and why?”
The president has expressed no secret of his desire to appear on the cover of Time and achieved this multiple times in the past year. This fixation has extended to his golf courses – in 2017, the magazine asked him to remove mocked up covers shown in some of his properties.
The latest edition’s photo was taken by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.
Its angle highlighted negatively his chin and neck area – a chance that California governor Newsom seized, with his press office tweeting a version with the criticized section obscured.
{The hostages from Israel in Gaza have been freed under the initial stage of Donald Trump's peace plan, alongside a Palestinian prisoner release. The deal could be a signature achievement of his next term, and it could mark a pivotal moment for the Middle East.
At the same time, a defense of Trump's image has emerged from unusual quarters: the communications chief at Moscow's diplomatic office stepped in to condemn the "revealing" image choice.
"It’s astonishing: a photo exposes those who chose it than about the person in it. Only disturbed individuals, people filled with spite and animosity –perhaps even perverts – could have picked this picture", she posted on Telegram.
In light of the positive pictures of President Biden that the same publication displayed on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the situation is self-revealing for the magazine", she said.
The explanation for the president's inquiries – what did the editors intend, and why? – might involve artistically representing a feeling of authority stated by an imaging expert, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.
"The actual photo itself technically is good," she explains. "They selected this photo because they wanted Trump to look commanding. Looking up at a person gives a sense of their majesty and his expression actually looks thoughtful and almost slightly angelic. It's rare you see images of the president in such a peaceful state – the image has a softness to it."
His hair seems to vanish because the rear illumination has overexposed that part of the image, generating a radiant circle, she says. And, while the story’s headline complements his facial expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the subject matter."
Nobody enjoys being photographed from below, and even if all of the thematic components of the image are quite powerful, the visual appeal are unflattering."
The Guardian reached out to the periodical for comment.
