Donald Trump’s rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday night was not a usual Donald Trump rally. Something in the air was different—Trump’s words, for starters. He rarely strayed from the prepared remarks on his teleprompter, delivering a speech that stayed on topic and told a complete narrative, unlike most of his directionless rants. He even admitted he sometimes says “the wrong thing,” adding, “I have done that, and I regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain.” Perhaps the campaign’s new CEO, Breitbart chairman Stephen Bannon, was already making his influence felt.

But it wasn’t just Trump himself. The crowd had changed. They were as angry as always; they called Hillary Clinton a “bitch” and chanted “lock her up.” But their deepest rage was reserved for another nemesis: the media.

For as long as Trump has run for president, he has criticized the media’s handling of his candidacy. But his rhetoric toward the press has heightened since the Republican National Convention as story after story—about his insults of the Khans, the dysfunction of his campaign, and the murky Russian dealings of his chairman, Paul Manafort—has chiseled away at his aura of invincibility.

The consensus in the crowd Thursday was that this biased coverage was to blame for Trump’s sinking poll numbers. When I walked into the Charlotte Convention Center, the first pair of men I came across were leaning over the railing of the press pit and joking about how much fun it’d be to “beat the shit” out of a few reporters typing away on their laptops and smartphones at one of the media tables. Later, I heard several people say that certain reporters, including the entire lineup at CNN, should be jailed for their indiscretions—and that Trump would do exactly that once he was elected.

Or rather, if he were elected. While some were still optimistic about his chances, there was a fresh sense of doom in the crowd. In the year I’ve been covering Trump, I’ve only heard a few supporters openly express a possibility that their candidate could lose, but on Thursday night it sounded like many of them had come to the same sobering conclusion. And if Trump loses, guess whose fault it will be?