Venture capitalist Blake Masters declared on Twitter this week that COVID âvaccine mandates are evilââa predictable play meant to rally his base in his bid to win the GOP Senate primary in Arizona. But it rankled one of his former best friends, Collin Wedel, an appellate attorney based in Los Angeles who served as the best man at Mastersâ wedding.
âShame on you. Iâm so utterly disappointed in what youâve done with yourself. People will get sick, and die, because of your reckless rhetoric,â Wedel tweeted in reply.
Wedel thought the message would effectively be private. His tweets are protected, readable only to his 40 followers, including Masters.
Mastersâwho is chief operating officer of Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thielâs investment firmâhad other ideas.
He screenshotted Wedelâs post and shared it with his 52,000 followers, breathlessly proclaiming, âThe most deadly virus we face is progressivism, it rots both brains and nations. I wish Collin well â but freedom is worth losing friends over.â
In an interview with The Daily Beast on Friday, Wedel said that Mastersâ political trajectoryâthe Trump endorsement, the âbuild the wallâ rhetoric, the Critical Race Theory bandwagoningâhas turned him into something of a stranger.
âMy knowledge of and friendship with Blake until he announced his candidacy for Senate was of him being a fundamentally sweet and nice guy with quirky libertarian views,â Wedel said. âNot stuff that would be as offensive as his current platform.
âHe started to toy with being a ânationalistâ right after the 2016 election, so I suppose I should have seen it coming,â he added.
âI have to believe he is too smart to believe most of this stuff,â he said.
In a private message to The Daily Beast, Masters offered softer words than he had tweeted in public.
âI think Collin is great. Heâs got a great family, heâs a great dad â will always be ready to catch up with him over a beer or let our kids play together,â he wrote. âThe contempt only goes one way, but these are divisive times and I have no ill will. Mainly itâs just sad.â
But he was unapologetic for blasting his old friend: âWhat I wonât do is stop saying what I know to be true, just to fit in or be accepted by others. Thereâs too much at stake for that.â
Masters is reportedly trailing Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich in the primary raceâin spite of major help from Thiel. The billionaire has fundraised for his protĂ©gĂ© and put $10 million into a Super PAC supporting him.
Masters first got to know the Paypal founder after taking a class he taught at Stanford Law School. (He and Wedel sat next to each other.) Masters and Thiel later teamed to write the bestselling book Zero to One, which was based on the class.
Wedel says the pairâs affinity made natural sense. âBlake has always been, since I first knew him, very libertarian,â he said.
Even in sixth grade, when he and Masters became friends, the political leanings were obvious.
âHis parents would give me rides in their car home for basketball practice⊠They were always listening to Michael Savage on the radio,â Wedel said. Later, â[Masters] gave me copies of Ayn Rand books and Ludwig von Mises essays and books about the gold standard.â
They remained close for years. Wedel recalled an incident on a vacation to Mexico after their senior year of high school, when he and Masters decided to take out a rickety plastic sailboat.
âThe wind died when we're in the middle of the ocean, so I had the bright idea of jumping out of the boat and just holding onto the side of it,â he said. âAnd then [we] sailed right through a giant Portuguese man oâ warâ jellyfish, which wrapped itself around Wedelâs head and neck.
Masters punched the creature off his friendâs head, then âswam the fastest half mile of his life back to shore to go get help.â
Wedelâs face and throat began to swell severely, but he received medical aid in time to âkeep me from dying,â he said.
It was a traumatic event that would bond any two people for life. And Wedel insists he hasnât cut off Masters for good.
âI consider us to still be friends,â he said. Mastersâ tweets and messaging, particularly about public health, simply demanded a public reproach.
âIf [his tweet] encourages even one person to not get a vaccine, and it prolongs the pandemic, you know, in my mind that that's dangerous, and he has a responsibility to be better than that.â