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Trump's comments these past two weeks have tanked the stock market

First it was North Korea. Then Charlottesville. Worlds apart, but the two incendiary situations have had a similar effect on the stock market in the last two weeks, prompting worried selling.

The Standard & Poor’s 500, a widely used measure of the stock market, was little changed Friday. But it finished lower for the week, its second straight weekly decline.

In all, the index is down 2 percent over its current losing streak, which is the biggest two-week drop since Donald Trump was elected president.

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It’s not just that investors’ sensibilities may be offended by the president’s moral equivocating about hate groups and Confederate history since last Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville, or that they they’re concerned about his heated war of words with North Korea over its missile tests.

The more substantive issue for investors is that Trump’s increasing isolation from corporate CEOs and fellow Republican officeholders may kill his sluggish legislative agenda for good. A handful of GOPers condemned Trump for blaming “both sides” for the Charlottesville violence, and more than 10 top business leaders stepped down from presidential business councils this week over the matter.

Specifically, Wall Street is anticipating debates soon on tax reform and increasing the federal debt ceiling — a once-commonplace part of governing that set off a near crisis in 2011 when partisan fighting pushed the country close to default.

Now both measures are facing a tougher road on Capitol Hill, according to Politico. And that’s giving people a reason to sell stocks if they don’t think the surge in stock prices that followed Trump’s election will last much longer.

Other key details:

—The Chicago Board Options Exchange’s Volatility Index, a widely followed measure known as the “fear index”, has risen sharply in the last two weeks, up more than 40 percent, boosted by the White House’s self-inflicted crises.

—Despite its two-week pullback, the S&P 500 is still in positive territory over the longer haul since Trump’s election, up 14 percent.

—Condemnations of Trump from people who should be political allies continued to roll in on Friday. James Murdoch, chief executive of Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox, pledged $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League after an email in which he criticized Trump’s Charlottesville response leaked. And former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney took to Facebook to publicly call on Trump to apologize.

“Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn,” Romney said.