If you want to claim that NBC noted a "notable" lack of public support outside of the questionnaire, feel free, quote that study from NBC, and I will look at that evidence.
Address Q1 and Q2 and perhaps you'll discover that you don't need me to provide you with a study to review.
If you actually expected all 44 questioned in the article you cited in your OP to say "yes"...
No one has suggested a unanimous verdict was needed for anything, so the remainder of this is a strawman.
either Not talking to NBC or OTHERWISE not publicly supporting Trump =/= does not support Trump, publicly or privately.
If someone does not publicly state that they support Trump, then by definition, they are not publicly supporting Trump. That follows from the definition of "publicly".
Whether they support him privately is another question, and of course, not supporting him publicly does not tell us anything about their attitude towards Trump privately.
But when you zoom out, this does in fact become notable. Any individual could have their personal reasons for not saying anything, but when only 4 will just say he should get reelected... That raises some serious red flags about the overall attitude towards him, especially when you have a chunk of them speaking out against him.
Do you seriously think Biden's cabinet or Obama's cabinet would be so quiet?