It is a glowing article in a magazine that the president has long exalted – except for one issue. The cover picture, he stated, "may be the Worst of All Time".
Time magazine's praise to the president's involvement in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was presented alongside a photo of the president taken from below while the sun behind his head.
The result, the president asserts, is ""extremely poor".
"Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the image may be the lowest quality in history", he shared on his preferred network.
“My hair was ‘disappeared’, and then there was a shape over my head that looked like a suspended diadem, but quite miniature. Really weird! I have always hated being captured from low angles, but this is a super bad image, and it should be denounced. What are they doing, and why?”
Donald Trump has shown no secret of his desire to feature on Time magazine's front page and achieved this four times last year. This fixation has made it as far as the president's resorts – years ago, the magazine asked him to remove mocked up covers on display at some of his properties.
The most recent cover image was shot by a photographer for a news agency at the White House on October 5.
The perspective highlighted negatively the president's jawline and throat – an opportunity that California governor Newsom did not miss, with his press office tweeting a version with the criticized section blurred.
{The Israeli captives detained in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Trump's ceasefire agreement, in exchange for a Palestinian prisoner release. The arrangement could be a major success of Trump's second term, and it may represent a strategic turning point for that part of the world.
Simultaneously, a defense of the president’s appearance has come from unusual quarters: the communications chief at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs intervened to criticise the "self-incriminating" image choice.
"It’s astonishing: a photograph says more about those who selected it than about the individual pictured. Only disturbed individuals, people filled with spite and resentment –possibly even deviants – could have picked this picture", Maria Zakharova wrote on her social channel.
In light of the positive pictures of President Biden that the same publication used on the cover, even with his age-related challenges, the story is simply self-incriminating for the magazine", she said.
The explanation for his queries – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – might involve artistically representing a feeling of authority says an imaging expert, a media professional.
"The actual photo itself technically is good," she says. "They picked this image because they wanted trump to look commanding. Gazing upward gives a sense of their grandeur and his expression actually looks thoughtful and almost slightly angelic. It's uncommon you see pictures of him in such a serene moment – the image has a softness to it."
His hair seems to vanish because the sunlight behind him has bleached that section of the image, producing a glowing aura, she explains. And, while the article's title pairs nicely with the president's look in the image, "you can’t always please the individual in question."
"No one likes being captured from low angles, and although all of the thematic components of the image are very strong, the visual appeal are not flattering."
The publication contacted Time magazine for comment.
