Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig richardbarbieri.com. NS
Answer
richardbarbieri.com. 4 NS ns-1431.awsdns-50.org.
richardbarbieri.com. 4 NS ns-898.awsdns-48.net.
richardbarbieri.com. 4 NS ns-304.awsdns-38.com.
richardbarbieri.com. 4 NS ns-1493.awsdns-58.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0