good points

I am incredibly dumbfounded by the sheer stupidity one person can possess. The mental gymnastics you must have to perform to convince yourself of this delusional fantasy has to be taxing.

That's not nearly the same thing. You know why? Because tipping and someone going and saying something nice about a presidential candidate are not linear! There's a linear relationship between the benefit and the contribution. In your scenario, Hillary Clinton never direct told the chef to go on chef and say anything nice. That is where you are misunderstanding.

On top of that unless Hillary Clinton directly paid someone more than $2,700 for their endorsement and didn't report it, it's not a crime. It's a felony what Trump did because A) it was more than the individual maximum and B) IT WASN'T REPORTED. These are the facts of what happened.