Can’t figure out carburetor

I can’t tell if I’m just doing something really wrong or if something is F’ed up in my carburetor. I’m new to tuning carburetors and never thought turning a screw driver would be so dang hard.
How do I tune the thing if I can’t even get the car to start in the first place?
I have a mild 440 with 10:1 compression, Edelbrick 800 carb, intake, and fuel pump.
My fuel pressure while cranking is 6.5psi.
I’ve set the timing to roughly 10BTDC by finding TDC on cylinder #1 on the compression stroke.
I have confirmed that I have spark while cranking.
My spark plugs are EXTREMELY fouled because evidently the carb was flooding the engine.
I turned the idle mixture screws in about 1 turn each to lean it out some and the car started coughing up smoke out of the carb. I turned the screws back half a turn towards where they were originally and it’s not even attempting to fire now.
I’ve even taken the carb apart to see if anything was clogged or broken but everything looked normal.
I feel like me and my car are going to wear out this forum we have so many problems I can’t figure out.