Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig clientaes.com. NS
Answer
clientaes.com. 5 NS graham.ns.cloudflare.com.
clientaes.com. 5 NS wanda.ns.cloudflare.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0