Your second paragraph is a variation of “The Devil made me do it”
It is against the law for a politician to accept money for special treatment. It is not against the law for a person to donate money to a candidate or an office holder in the hopes he will support legislation favorable to him as a businessman.
My point was that some donate more out of defense, while others donate with more aggressive activist intentions. Either way, both are legal, and should be judged differently from the acceptance of donations by politicians in exchange for special treatment, which is illegal. We don’t disagree on that. My only point was that even with regards to ‘cronies’, a term which C. Edmund Wright was glibly throwing around in regards to Trump, it is not as simple as he would like people to believe.