Some of us out here have commenced the countdown clock to determine when Donald J. Trump is going to commit a profoundly foolish, stupid and potentially illegal act when he assumes the presidency on Jan. 20.

I am not making any bets. I don’t know when it will occur. I do have some notions, though, about what Trump might seek to do when he takes his hand off the holy book on inauguration day.

He could:

• Pardon the traitors who were jailed for their attack on the government on Jan. 6, 2021.
• Issue an executive order establishing a sky-high tariff on imported goods, which could trigger an inflation rate we haven’t seen in many decades.
• Call Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and promise to end any support for Ukraine, which would clear the deck for Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
• Issue another executive order calling for the mass deportation of 11 million U.S. residents who are here illegally.
• Call flag officers back to active duty and then order them court-martialed for comments they made about Trump being a fascist. I am researching that idiotic notion to see if it’s legal. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Will he do any of them? Beats the daylights out of me. I’m just speculating, because that’s all I can do sitting here at some distance.

None of this, of course, includes any of the idiotic pronouncements he could make. I am wondering what could be the memorable from his second inaugural speech. The first one gave us “the American carnage ends” immediately. It didn’t.

The second Trump term well could be as chaotic as the first one.

Let’s all hold on with both hands.