Grimes, musician & Elon Musk's ex, thinks US needs more leaders like Lee Kuan Yew

Canadian singer and songwriter Claire Boucher, also known as Grimes, thinks the world could do with more "Lee Kuan Yew-types".

The former girlfriend of Elon Musk, with whom she had three children, sat down with TIME magazine for a sprawling, lengthy interview on Artificial Intelligence (AI), politics, art, and more.

At one point in the conversation, Grimes responded to a question about a since-deleted post on X (formerly known as Twitter) she made a few weeks prior:

"I feel like I was tricked by people pretending to be into critical thought and consequentialism who are acting like power-hungry warlords now and like cruelly enjoying the panic and suffering that obviously creates and it's disturbing."

Grimes, however, did not explicitly specify who the "people" who tricked her were.

The tweet was made at a time roughly when Musk began playing an outsized role in the White House since Donald Trump's inauguration as president.

Heading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has been actively attempting to slash the size of the federal government.

Many federal staffers have since resigned en masse, refusing to cooperate with Musk's plans, the Associated Press reported.

Musk also got into trouble over making what appeared to be a Nazi salute during a Trump rally, twice.

Lee Kuan Yew as "Philosopher King"

Grimes went on to share her somewhat scattered thoughts on democracy and politics in the United States (U.S.) today.

Grimes noted that she was not a U.S. citizen herself, but highlighted the importance of "diplomacy and decorum".

"When people are like, ‘Haha, we won.’ I'm like, ‘what is the purpose?’" she said.

She felt that the "warlords" who are currently in charge are not "necessarily prioritising the things that would just make more people happy."

For Grimes, leadership ought to be about "uniting everybody" instead.

LKY fan

She then highlighted Lee as an example of the kind of political leader that could benefit the U.S., appearing to compare him to a "philosopher king":

"I don't know. I feel like we have a lot of generals and not a lot of philosopher kings, which would be the ideal situation. Just like, Lee Kuan Yew-types.

I just want people to come out here and throw everything at the kids and throw everything at education. You don't need to be on either side to do things like that."

This is not the first time Grimes has expressed enthusiasm for Lee.

A few weeks earlier on Jan. 27, Grimes posted a picture of Lee giving a speech during the 1980 General Election to X with the caption, "Please god we need the reincarnation of the avatar":

America's fascination with Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew has long been a figure of fascination in the U.S.

Musk, for instance, once called Lee  "brilliant" in relation to his immigration policy:

The tweet was about how Lee "obsessed over the airport experience" to "create an onboarding experience so magical they question why they aren't living there".

Blake Masters, an American venture capitalist and former Republican senate candidate, once heralded Lee Kuan Yew in an interview with Stanford Review:

"[Lee] understood markets and capitalism in a way that so-called ‘free-market’ people at conservative think tanks don't. He created a modern, prosperous country and did it in a way that was more conservative than libertarian. He did something genuinely new in politics.

The sad part is that the Singaporean youth today, a generation or two removed from the Singaporean miracle, don’t understand their history. They themselves are rich and complacent and falling to the same sort of left-wing forces that plague us here. People who study Lee Kuan Yew can see what one committed person can do to change things.”

Top photo from K Shanmugam/Facebook & Grimes/Instagram