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Steve Bannon.
- Steve Bannon is plotting his comeback.
- He's planning to unleash a pro-Trump ad campaign ahead of the 2018 midterms.
- And he wants to get into cryptocurrency.
It looks like Steve Bannon is beginning his comeback.
Nearly a year after he departed the White House as chief strategist, and about half a year after he was eviscerated by President Donald Trump for the comments he made to journalist Michael Wolff in his book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," Bannon is reportedly pushing forward on two fronts in what looks like an attempt to regain relevance in electoral
CNBC reported that Bannon plans to unleash a pro-Trump ad campaign as the 2018 midterms close in. Bannon began paying surrogates to produce the ads last month, people with knowledge of the campaign told CNBC. Some of the topics the ads will focus on include tax reform and the curtailing of the Dodd-Frank Act.
The outlet wrote that it's still unclear whether the ads will be released on TV, digitally, or on radio, but the plan is to run them nationwide.
Meanwhile, part of Bannon's electoral plan includes creating a war room to monitor contests through the November elections. The plans were dubbed "top secret" by one Bannon ally to CNBC.
A source with knowledge of the plans laid out by CNBC confirmed their existence to Business Insider.
"Steve was never going to go quietly into the night," a source close to Bannon told Business Insider. "So the fact that he's reengaging in American politics isn't a surprise to anyone who knows him."
Bannon popped up elsewhere on Monday too. In an interview with The New York Times, Bannon laid out how he wants in on the cryptocurrency craze, with the idea that such currencies offer political movements economic freedom because they don't need to utilize government-controlled currency.
"It was pretty obvious to me that unless you got somehow control over your currency, all these political movements were going to be beholden to who controlled the currency," he said.
Bannon, who has also led the far-right website Breitbart News, has invested in bitcoin and wants to launch a new cryptocurrency called "deplorables coin," which is a reference to the now-infamous comment from 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton about Trump supporters.
"It's disruptive populism," Bannon said. "It takes control back from central authorities. It's revolutionary."
In recent months, Bannon popped up in Europe, traveling to meet with rising far-right populist leaders.
Bannon did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.