Donald Trump never likes to be seen as a loser, which is why he was reportedly not happy to see campaign aides and surrogates acknowledge publicly that he lost Monday’s debate and needed to do a better job of preparing next time.

CNN is reporting that “in a conference call with surrogates Wednesday afternoon, Trump aides made clear the Republican nominee is upset that his allies publicly acknowledged they pushed him to change his preparation and tactics before his next bout with Hillary Clinton.” Trump also demanded that they stop criticizing his debate performance “immediately.”

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CNN’s sources say Trump instead wants his supporters to make “energetic” cases that he really won the debate on Monday while refusing to concede that he made any mistakes.

This is interesting because Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway had, for the past month or so, convinced Trump to keep things comparatively toned down and on message. It seems that Trump’s personality is hard to contain for too long, however, and now it seems he’s broken free of his leash and is back to snarling at passersby.

Whether he can be successfully subdued before the next debate on October 9th will be very interesting to watch.