Nothing was off limits for tennis legend Serena Williams as she hosted the ESPYs in Los Angeles on Thursday night. 

During her opening monologue, Williams recognized Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark for the three nominations she received, including best women's athlete of the year. 

Despite first praising the WNBA’s first overall pick, Williams made a joke about the debate surrounding Clark’s unprecedented popularity in the league. 

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"Caitlin Clark has had an amazing year and is nominated for three awards. Caitlin, you are the Larry Bird in that you are an amazing player, you have ties to Indiana, and White people are really crazy about you." 

However, Williams’ remark in jest follows her recent advice to Clark, when she suggested that the root of the controversy surrounding her pro debut stems from jealousy. 

"I just love that she tried to stay grounded and that she doesn't ... look at her social [media]," Williams told The Associated Press last month on the red carpet for the premier of her new docuseries. 

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"I get it. I don't either. And I think it's so important to continue doing what she's doing. And no matter what other people do, if people are negative then it's because they can't do what you do, basically. Hopefully she'll continue to do what she's doing."

Clark has done just that. 

Over the weekend, the former Iowa star dropped 19 points, handed out 13 assists and grabbed 12 rebounds to become the first rookie in WNBA history to record a triple-double. She also received the most votes for the WNBA All-Star Game, and this week, she became the first WNBA player to get at least 25 points, 10 assists, five rebounds, five steals and five 3-pointers in a single game. 

Despite losing the best women's athlete of the year award to Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson, Clark won two awards for record-breaking performance in becoming the NCAA’s all-time career scoring leader, and as best college athlete, for her Iowa basketball career.

"I’m a little bit busy in Indianapolis," Clark said via videotape. "It was a special year in women’s athletics."

Fox News’ Chantz Martin and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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The bar could not have been lower, nor the stakes higher for President Joe Biden than they were for his prime time press conference on Thursday night. 

And while he just barely cleared the bar and likely lived to fight another day, the stakes for him and the nation remain just as high.

Yes, there were stumbles and gaffes. Even before the press conference, he introduced Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy as "President Putin" at a NATO event, and later at the presser, he confused his own Vice President Kamala Harris with Donald Trump. But on the Biden bungling scale those are barely bumps in the road.

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More troubling was the soft whispery voice, the now-and-then return to the distant stare, the difficulty finishing sentences, and an awkward reference to First Lady Jill Biden getting angry with him. Still, for Biden these were not jaw-dropping moments, like we saw in Atlanta two weeks ago.

So, did Biden do enough up there alone on the podium, responding to question after question about his mental and physical abilities to save his candidacy or even his presidency?

Rep. Jim Himes, a powerful Connecticut Democrat on the Intelligence Committee didn’t think so, posting on X just minutes after the press conference that Biden should drop out. But the honest answer to whether Biden righted the ship of his campaign is an underwhelming "maybe."

We now know that at least one conversation about Biden's future has taken place between Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, grand poohbahs of the Democratic Party. How impressed were they by Biden’s performance? Hard to say.

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The underlying problem has not been fixed, because there is still every reason to believe that in the four months between now and election day we could see the Joe Biden of the debate again, even if we didn’t at Thursday’s press conference.

Team Biden certainly wants to believe that the event was a test that Biden passed and that we should all turn the page on the whole scandal. Yet there is very little chance of that, in large part because Biden himself, and his mental condition, are still the main story.

It was telling, in fact, how little news the first solo presidential press conference in months produced about anything other than the president’s fitness for office, or lack thereof.

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Under normal circumstances, we would be talking about Biden once again throwing Israel under the bus by answering a question on whether he could have done anything different in response to the conflict in Gaza by saying he wished the Israeli War Cabinet had listened to him more often.

But that ridiculous answer, like every other answer he gave was utterly irrelevant. Nobody was paying attention to the content of the words, just whether or not the president of the United States could successfully say them in order.

That just isn’t sustainable. The entire political focus of the nation cannot be on whether its most powerful leader is having a good day or a bad day. Not for the next four months, and certainly not for the next five years. Yet, that is still what we are looking at.

For Democrats, this was just about the worst performance Biden could have given. It wasn’t bad enough to open the floodgates on calls to step down, but it wasn’t good enough to make Americans stop wondering and worrying about the president’s condition.

And so we are stuck, right where we were before Biden took to the stage. Even if he stopped the immediate bleeding, and it isn’t even entirely clear he did that, he is still deeply, if not mortally wounded politically.

Joe Biden’s obstinate reply to growing concerns about his age and fitness has always been, "watch me." Well, Mr. President, we are. In fact it is all we are watching, it is all we can see, and there is real reason to believe that will never, ever change.

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