It's quite possible that what the author intends by “memory protections” is broader than what is captured by “memory safety”; e.g., the borrower checker is, in a sense, a way of protecting memory from unexpected changes in parallel tasks.
It is definitely false for the author to say Rust is "superior to C# in regards to better memory protections", in any definition of "memory protections".
Or, did someone prod a journalist with little familiarity in programming theory, to write positive "spin" on Rust being explored by Microsoft? Is it even news for the world's largest software company (by market cap), to explore the use of emerging languages?
I missed the part where whether the author used words and, if so, which words they were was a matter of controversy.
That's the part you cited, and went on to imply the author might be referring to Rust's borrower checker. Nothing from the author's "wording" implies knowledge of Rust's memory protection techniques