(CNN) Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether congressional Democrats will ever get to see President Donald Trump's tax returns. Here's how he responded:

"Oh no, never, nor should they. Keep in mind that that's an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the President could have given his tax returns, they knew that he didn't, and they elected him anyway, which of course is what drive the Democrats crazy."

This is wrong. You can debate whether Trump should be forced to reveal his taxes under a 1924 IRS law, but you simply cannot successfully argue that the 2016 election was a referendum -- even in a small way -- on the President's unwillingness to release his taxes.

It's also not the first time someone in Trump's inner circle has made this argument. Way back in January 2017, White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway said of Trump's taxes that "we litigated this all through the election." Added Conway: "People didn't care. They voted for him, and let me make this very clear: Most Americans are very focused on what their tax returns will look like while President Trump is in office, not what his look like."

The fundamental logic flaw in the arguments put forward by Mulvaney and Conway is that any and all of Trump's flaws, transgressions or abnormalities are fully and completely exonerated -- TOTAL EXONERATION -- by the fact that he won.

Under that line of thinking, people who voted for Trump fully approve of how he behaves toward women -- more than a dozen of whom said during the 2016 campaign that Trump had behaved inappropriately -- and worse -- around them. And we know that's not true, since 70%(!) of the electorate said that Trump's treatment of women bothered them, according to exit polling

Painting with such an overly broad brush -- a la Mulvaney and Conway -- drastically oversimplifies why voters do what they do. Elections are never about one thing or one person. It's a choice, always, between at least two candidates. And voters are motivated by lots of different things at the same time.

A look at the 2016 exit polling suggests that the primary motivation for voters who chose Trump was electing someone who could change Washington in fundamental ways, and they saw Trump much more in that light than Hillary Clinton. Four in 10 voters said that the most important quality they were looking for in a candidate was someone who could bring about change; Trump won that group 82% to 14% over Hillary Clinton.

There were a total of zero -- that's 0 -- questions about Trump's taxes and his refusal to release them (making him the first president to do so since Watergate) on the exit poll . Zilch. Not a one.

It is possible to make the argument that in voting for change, Trump voters saw his unwillingness to release his returns as somehow indicative of just how radically different Trump was than not only Clinton but also everyone who had held the office before him? I mean, I guesssssssss.....but almost certainly not.

The most likely explanation is that while they didn't love that Trump refused to release his taxes, voters made their final choice on other issues -- again with his perceived power as a change agent right at the top of that list. Most polling since the election, in fact, shows a clear majority of Americans believe Trump should release at least some of his tax returns. In a Quinnipiac University poll released in February, a whopping 67% said they wanted Trump to release his taxes while just 24% said he shouldn't. That same poll showed a majority of Americans (52%) said Trump wasn't releasing his returns because he had "something to hide."

(Nota bene: It's important to distinguish between people who say they want Trump to release his taxes and those who will vote against him for not doing so. The former number is high; the latter number not so much.)

The argument over Trump's tax returns will turn into a legal one sometime very soon. The IRS isn't going to turn the returns over, at which point House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal will have to decide whether he wants to subpoena the returns. If he does that, we are likely headed to the Supreme Court. (Make sure to read this great explainer by CNN's Lauren Fox on what's next in the tax return fight .)

But from a purely political perspective, the argument being forward by Mulvaney is nonsense. There is NO evidence to suggest that voters approved of Trump's refusal to release his taxes in 2016 -- and there's plenty to suggest that they were not (and are not) happy with that decision.