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It is a favorable feature in a magazine that Trump has consistently praised – except for one issue. The magazine's cover photo, he stated, ""could be the worst ever".

Time's paean to Donald Trump's part in brokering a Gaza ceasefire, featured on its November 10 cover, was accompanied by a photograph of Trump shot from a low angle and with the sun positioned behind him.

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

"The publication wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the photo may be the lowest quality in history", he shared on his social media platform.

“My hair was ‘disappeared’, and then there was an object above my head that appeared as a floating crown, but quite miniature. Truly strange! I have never liked being shot from underneath, but this is a super bad image, and it deserves to be called out. What is their goal, and why?”

Trump has made clear his wish to appear on the cover of Time and accomplished it multiple times in the past year. The preoccupation has made it as far as Trump’s golf clubs – previously, the editors demanded to remove mocked up covers exhibited in some of his properties.

The most recent cover image was taken by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the White House on 5 October.

Its angle highlighted negatively his chin and neck area – an opportunity that the governor of California Gavin Newsom seized, with the governor's office sharing an altered image with the problematic part pixelated.

{The living Israeli hostages in Gaza have been liberated under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan, alongside a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal may become a major success of the president's renewed tenure, and it could mark a key shift for the region.

Meanwhile, a defence of his portrayal has come from an unexpected source: the director of information at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to criticise the "damaging" photo selection.

It's remarkable: a photograph says more about those who picked it than about the individual pictured. Only disturbed individuals, people filled with spite and hatred –maybe even degenerates – could have selected such an image", Maria Zakharova posted on Telegram.

In light of the positive pictures of Biden that the periodical used on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the story is simply self-incriminating for Time", she noted.

The explanation for Trump’s questions – what did the editors intend, and why? – may be something to do with innovatively depicting a sense of power according to a picture editor, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

"The actual photo itself is professionally taken," she explains. "They picked this image because they wanted the president to look commanding. Gazing upward evokes a feeling of their grandeur and the president's visage actually looks thoughtful and almost somewhat divine. It's uncommon you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the picture feels tender."

The president's hair seems to vanish because the sunlight behind him has bleached that section of the image, generating a radiant circle, she adds. Even though the article's title complements his facial expression in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the person photographed."

"No one likes being shot from underneath, and although all of the conceptual elements of the image are very strong, the appearance are not complimentary."

The Guardian reached out to the magazine for feedback.