AM radio static

There should be nothing in the radio connected to anything in the gauge cluster except the radio dial/ cluster lighting. I don't know how in hell you could have damaged the radio doing so

You didn't say, connect a booster battery or charger up reversed polarity did you?
No nothing like that. I just have a battery cut off switch installed mostly for anti-theft purposes. I killed the power when I swapped out the starter relay and then turn the power back on to confirm the new starter relay was working which it is. But the back of the gauge cluster was touching the frame of the dash and started to smoke so I shut everything off. Once I knew I had everything clear of the dash frame I restarted the engine with no problem and no smoke coming from the dash area. It was at this time but I realize that the radio wasn’t coming on but the heater blower cigarette lighter etc. all work as they did before. Only the radio seems to have no power even though there’s power to the wire feeding the radio