Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig brainier.com. NS
Answer
brainier.com. 4 NS ns-1310.awsdns-35.org.
brainier.com. 4 NS ns-1988.awsdns-56.co.uk.
brainier.com. 4 NS ns-385.awsdns-48.com.
brainier.com. 4 NS ns-878.awsdns-45.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0