🔗 Share this article

It is a positive feature in a magazine that Donald Trump has frequently admired – except for one issue. The front-page image, the president decreed, "may be the Worst of All Time".

Time magazine's praise to the president's involvement in facilitating a truce for Gaza, leading its 10 November issue, was paired with a image of the president captured from underneath and with the sun behind his head.

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

"The publication wrote a relatively good story about me, but the image may be the Worst of All Time", Trump wrote on his preferred network.

“They removed my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”

The president has expressed obvious his ambition to be pictured on the cover of Time and did so multiple times in the past year. The preoccupation has extended to Trump’s golf clubs – years ago, the publication requested to remove fabricated front pages shown in a few of his establishments.

The most recent cover image was shot by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.

The shot's viewpoint highlighted negatively the president's jawline and throat – a chance that the governor of California Newsom did not miss, with his press office tweeting a version with the problematic part pixelated.

{The hostages from Israel detained in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Trump's ceasefire agreement, together with a release of Palestinian detainees. The arrangement may become a major success of the president's renewed tenure, and it might signify a key shift for the Middle East.

Simultaneously, a support for the president’s appearance has emerged from an unexpected source: the spokesperson at Moscow's diplomatic office stepped in to criticise the "damaging" photo selection.

It's remarkable: a photo says more about those who chose it than about the subject. Only sick people, people driven by hatred and resentment –possibly even deviants – could have chosen such a photo", Maria Zakharova wrote on the messaging platform.

Considering the favorable images of President Biden that the periodical displayed on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the situation is self-revealing for the magazine", she noted.

The answer to the president's inquiries – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – might involve creatively capturing a sense of power stated by a picture editor, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

The photograph technically is well-executed," she notes. "They chose this shot because they wanted the president to look heroic. Gazing upward evokes a feeling of their grandeur and the president's visage actually looks contemplative and almost a bit ethereal. It’s not often you see pictures of him in such a calm instance – the photo appears gentle."

The president's hair seems to vanish because the light from behind has bleached that section of the image, creating a halo effect, she adds. Although the article's title complements Trump’s expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the individual in question."

Nobody enjoys being captured from low angles, and even if all of the thematic components of the image are highly effective, the aesthetics are not complimentary."

The news outlet contacted Time magazine for comment.