So long, Elon: the cuts didn't go to plan, but you trashed your reputation Marina Hyde

I can't believe that Elon Musk has left Doge, the government department he named after a tired and basic meme that most of the internet had moved on from around a decade ago.

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"As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end," Musk wrote last week (capital letters: model's own), "I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful government spending." Oh man. "Thank you for the opportunity"?! At some level you have to salute Donald Trump's ability to turn even the world's richest man into an Apprentice candidate who leaves in week four after wiping out in the hotdog stand task.

Musk arrived in government promising to slash spending by $2tn. He leaves it a mere $1.86tn short of that target. Meanwhile, the president's new tax bill is set to add $2.3tn to the deficit. I imagine Musk thought his government finale would be a spectacular extravaganza "you're welcome, Washington!" - involving 2,000 chainsaw-wielding chorus girls. Instead, it's a tweet. And yes we DO all still call them tweets.

Ironically, the thing that Musk has been most stunningly effective at slashing is his own reputation.

Think about it. He arrived in Trump's orbit as a somewhat mysterious man, widely regarded as a tech genius, and a titan of the age. He leaves it with vast numbers of people woken up to the fact he's a weird and creepy breeding fetishist, who desperately pretends to be good at video games, and wasn't remotely as key to Space X or Tesla's engineering prowess as they'd vaguely thought. Also, with a number of them apparently convinced he had a botched penile implant. Rightly or wrongly convinced - sure. I'm just asking questions.