Troubling Passages

This passage from the New York Times is rightly getting a lot of attention on Twitter:

In private, three administration officials conceded that they could not publicly articulate their most compelling — and honest — defense of the president: that Mr. Trump, a hasty and indifferent reader of printed briefing materials, simply did not possess the interest or knowledge of the granular details of intelligence gathering to leak specific sources and methods of intelligence gathering that would do harm to United States allies.

However, I haven't seen anyone point out that it doesn't make much sense. When McMaster made his non-denial denial, he claimed that Trump hadn't said anything about sources and methods. This was recognized as non-responsive because the story was that the information divulged by Trump bore on those issues without expressly including them. If I tell my wife that she is a better kisser than her sister, all I've technically revealed is a personal preference. I haven't said anything about who has and hasn't kissed me. But my wife might well wonder how I came to possess the knowledge necessary to make an informed judgment about my preferences in that area.