They're not unrelated, there's both the exact opposite bet on the same issue: should the west take Russia at face value?
Saying "Germany needs to look after it's energy independence" is synonym with "the west cant trust Russia", and saying "I'm taking the USA out of NATO" is synonym with "the west can trust Russia".
So he just claimed two opposite views and his fan it's pick and choose.
> "I'm taking the USA out of NATO" is synonym with "the west can trust Russia".
Trump was all over the place so it's hard to know what his exact positions were but he definitely bitched about European countries for not maintaining the NATO spending goal of 2 percent of economic output [0] which seemed to be his main gripe with NATO from what I remember.
One quote from the article: "Mr. Trump appeared especially annoyed, officials in the meeting said, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and her country’s military spending of 1 percent of its gross domestic product."
The purpose of NATO is to serve as mutual defense. If it's mutual defense with a bunch of nearly unarmed countries, how "mutual" is it?
(Yes, you could consider having other countries coming to your defense to be multiplying your force. But if they don't have much of a force of their own, how much "multiplying" are they doing?)
Saying "Germany needs to look after it's energy independence" is synonym with "the west cant trust Russia", and saying "I'm taking the USA out of NATO" is synonym with "the west can trust Russia".
So he just claimed two opposite views and his fan it's pick and choose.