From the October 14, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show

MICHAEL KNOWLES (HOST): And what's the picture? It's a picture from below of Trump looking up. So already we're at an angle that is not flattering ever. You never want the the picture going up your nose. But already it's a bad angle, and it's this angle that puts almost exactly in the center of the photograph — your eye is drawn because of the lines of his collar, of his necktie, of his neck, of the near centrality of this particular point of the image. It's President Trump's neck kind of being pulled in a wrinkle in at his collar. So it's not a flattering image. And I say this without myself attempting to flatter Trump. He's a good looking guy — he — Trump is a good looking guy. And before he got into politics, most people would acknowledge that. He's a good looking guy. He's tall. He's well built. He's — I'm not saying he's Fabio. I'm just saying he's a good looking guy. He he cuts a strong image on stage and on camera. That's why he was a number one TV star on network TV for 12 to 15 years. And this picture is not flattering. They pull — this image of where — it looks like it's — I don't know — they're making his face look like it's Saran wrap being wrapped around a basketball or something. 

Then you look up at his head, and it's a good facial expression that he's making. It's optimistic. It's looking up, looking up toward heaven. We'll get to the significance of that. But there's something missing. Can you tell what's missing about this picture? Beyond they make him look wrinkly, and it's just an unflattering angle on anybody. The angle gets rid of his hair. You get a little wisp of hair on the right side of his head. The left side of his head, so the right side of the image, it basically looks like he's bald. Light shining through it, a little bit of hair on the back, but it — where'd his hair go? They got rid of his hair. So they take a picture of this man who is, you know, for a for a man of a certain age, he's a good looking guy. They take the least flattering picture they can, but the key to it — and this is the part I don't think other people have really picked up on — they got rid of the hair intentionally. 

First of all, images in newspapers, in magazines, are selected with great precision and specificity. There are people whose job it is, the photo editors, to pick the images. Every part of the images are intended to convey something. When you're talking about a legacy outlet like Time Magazine, the stakes go much, much higher. When you talk about a cover image, it's much higher still. They picked this image intentionally. And everyone's just focusing on, oh, they made it look like his neck is wrinkly. Oh, they made it look like his head is kind of oddly shaped. And the key to it is the hair. And Trump picked up on that. Trump is the only other person I've seen who's picked up on this.