Eh.. Yesterday they say that McMaster didn't not deny the story.
Not they are saying Trump denies McMasters's story.
Can you or anybody else specifically say what those contradictions are?
Trump said that he shared 'facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.'
McMaster:
"The story that came out tonight as reported is false. The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time, at no time, were intelligence sources or methods discussed and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known,"
So it is not the same?
Sure.
McMaster specifically said that, "The story that came out tonight was false." Now, as you correctly point out, what McMaster went on to specifically deny, the sharing of "sources and methods," was in fact NOT what the WP story accused Trump of. (The WP story simply accused Trump of sharing classified intelligence of the type of that would tend to compromise the source of the intel. Basically the allegation is that Trump blabbed the type of info that gets sources in the field killed). So yes, by carefully crafting his denial to only deny things not actually charged, McMasters was widely viewed as confirming the actual allegations contained in the story.
But Washington doublespeak aside, McMaster still went out and told the press the story was false. So of course this morning Trump sent out a tweet defending his decision to do exactly what the WP story alleged. So the story is true, and Trump admits it. That means McMaster lied when he said the story was false. Simple.
Now, the problem going forward is that in order to know how serious Trump's lapse in judgement was, we need to know what information was shared. And we can't know that because 1) it is highly classified, and 2) if the whole point is that Trump blabbed the kind of thing that gets assets killed, then the sources leaking this, and by extension, the press reporting this, can't leak too many more details without the critique of Trump being hypocritical and self-defeating.
