It is a positive story in a magazine that Donald Trump has frequently admired – but for one catch. The magazine's cover photo, he stated, ""could be the worst ever".
Time's tribute to the president's involvement in mediating a Gaza ceasefire, leading its 10 November issue, was paired with a photograph of Trump taken from below and with the sun behind his head.
The result, he says, is ""extremely poor".
"Time Magazine wrote a quite favorable story about me, but the picture may be the lowest quality in history", Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“They eliminated my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Quite bizarre! I consistently avoided taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a terrible picture, and should be criticized. Why did they do this, and why?”
Donald Trump has shown no secret of his desire to feature on Time’s cover and achieved this four times last year. This fixation has extended to the president's resorts – previously, the editors demanded to remove mocked up covers exhibited in some of his properties.
The most recent cover image was captured by a photographer for Bloomberg at the White House on 5 October.
The perspective was unflattering to the president's jawline and throat – an opening that the governor of California Newsom seized, with his press office tweeting a version with the problematic part pixelated.
{The Israeli captives detained in Gaza have been liberated under the first phase of Trump's ceasefire agreement, in exchange for a Palestinian prisoner release. The arrangement may become a signature achievement of the president's renewed tenure, and it may represent a pivotal moment for the Middle East.
At the same time, a defense of Trump's image has emerged from an unexpected source: the director of information at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to criticise the "damaging" image choice.
It's remarkable: a image says more about those who chose it than about the individual pictured. Only sick people, people filled with spite and resentment –maybe even degenerates – could have selected such an image", the official posted on the messaging platform.
In light of the positive pictures of Biden that the periodical displayed on the cover, notwithstanding his health issues, the story is simply self-incriminating for the magazine", she noted.
The answer to the president's inquiries – why did they choose this, and why? – could be related to artistically representing a feeling of authority according to a picture editor, an Australian publication's photo editor.
The image itself is professionally taken," she says. "They chose this shot because they wanted the president to look heroic. Gazing upward gives a sense of their grandeur and the president's visage actually looks contemplative and almost slightly angelic. It’s not often you see images of the president in such a calm instance – the picture feels tender."
The president's hair appears to “disappear” because the rear illumination has overexposed that part of the image, generating a radiant circle, she adds. Even though the article's title pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "you can’t always please the person photographed."
"No one likes being photographed from below, and while all of the conceptual elements of the image are very strong, the appearance are not flattering."
The publication contacted Time magazine for a statement.
