What a cluster..f*ck. Cruise edition.

Last year, as the pandemic was taking hold, VP pence, senators rubio and Scott, and gov desantis stood at the cruise terminal in Fort Lauderdale, and made clear their aim was to protect the cruise industry from harm during the pandemic.

It was clear they were only talking about this huge moneymaker, with its tourism dollars and financial contributions to their political campaigns. Not to protect people or the general business. No this was about protecting their wealthy donors.

Flash forward and pence is gone. And rubio and Scott have different priorities. They are still be interested in political contributions, but they've stayed oddly quiet on this issue. It should be obvious, of course, that they are only in it for themselves.

So desantis is on his own. He wants the industry to bring tourist money to the state. He wants to help them so he comes off as some kind of hero, financially, and to try and help his own re-election.

He issues some BS orders and has legislation that gives him supreme authority in the state. Over municipalities. Over tourist related business. And effectively over the cruise industry.

The CDC issues guidelines for cruising. Those don't meet with what he wants and he sues. They try to mediate. That goes nowhere.

So cruising is stuck. Executives of the cruise lines have no idea what to do and engaged their lawyers to figure it all out.

Some are running "test cruises" this week, with no idea how that will go. And it's completely unclear whether/how sailing will start in July.

And then there's this little nugget. If this doesn't get worked out soon, or even if it does in a nuanced way that it tilts toward Florida, some cruise lines not leaving Florida will be impacted and may not be able to sail at all.

Take the Alaskan cruise lines that already made arrangements to leave from seattle and not stop in Canada. They had to make some legal changes to accommodate.

And some of those may not be doable for these large companies that do business in multiple states because of the flori-duh rules.

In short, desantis is in it for himself and he's left everyone scratching their heads just to score some sort of "victory" for himself.

That's your ball licking trump supporter right there.