Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig themselvesct.com. NS
Answer
themselvesct.com. 5 NS ns32.domaincontrol.com.
themselvesct.com. 5 NS ns31.domaincontrol.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0