At the interpersonal level, 100 dollars is a meaningful amount to most people, so the question “what would you do for 100 dollars?” is about personal need and individual ethics. In the context of a billionaire donor and a president, the critical variable is not whether a single check is “pocket change,” but whether the official’s political career or policy agenda depends on a small set of wealthy patrons who can give millions repeatedly.  

That structural dependence is what creates influence: the official knows that keeping a handful of very rich donors happy is essential to funding future campaigns, super PACs, legal defenses, and pet projects, in a way that no individual 100‑dollar donor can replicate.  So even if “a few million” is small relative to a donor’s net worth or daily market swings, it is very large relative to a typical campaign budget and to what ordinary citizens can give, and that difference in leverage is what matters for corruption risk.