As someone pointed out, he did not say that. The source of this article, just as other articles selling the same story, is Velonews. Velonews has to be one of the biggest jokes, reporting fake news and mistranslating or mistranscribing stories on a near daily basis. So what happened is Velonews has rehashed a story of well over a week ago, where all major newsoutlets were aware of since it was an online press conference. Velonews now decided to ignore some parts of what he said, and focus on other parts of what he said nearly 2 weeks ago, July 30th.
What he said during this press conference was that the main goal is to win one or two stages, considering lots of things can go wrong for GC. He will see how things develop for GC but whatever happens there will be a bonus. In closing, he said he would be happy with a stagewin and a top 10 in GC. So even if he was downplaying his GC focus, he didn't say he had no interest in it, or would not even try to ride for GC.