we can barely tell if there is water on the moon or mars, despite having gone here multiple times. Yet we can say confidently that a planet in another solar system has lava oceans and it "rains rocks".... right

And this is how Democracy ultimately dies (not that we are a true democracy anyway, but whatever we have left of one....). The bigger picture here is that he considered these deals to benefit his re-election. If you don't see a problem there, then you deserve all the shit thats coming to you.