Presidential candidate Jill Stein and her vice presidential running mate Ajamu Baraka made political history Wednesday night as the first Green party candidates to participate in an hour-plus town hall meeting on primetime network television.
It is the first time the candidates will have time to lay out their “Green New Deal” platform on mainstream media, reaching potentially millions of voters.
Telling the audience she is practicing "political medicine," Dr Stein said her campaign is about "healing our wounds" as a country and a world.
Across the country, Stein supporters gathered for ‘watch parties’ taking place in more than 150 locations in most states.
Chris Cuomo moderated the event which started at 9:00pm ET.
Stein and Baraka faced questions from members of the public and Cuomo on their policy positions.
CNN has been accused of pro-Clinton bias, earning the nickname the “Clinton News Network.”
Dr Stein was asked by a fellow doctor in the audience about her position on vaccinations, which has been misrepresented on social media.
READ MORE: Debunking the media’s smear campaign against Green presidential candidate Jill Stein
Republican rival Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced controversial vaccination statements, but is rarely pressed on these issues.
She also addressed the “spoiler” question, which dates back to the 2000 election when Ralph Nader was blamed for the “loss” of Democrat Al Gore.
A software engineer from the Bronx who switched from Sanders to Clinton asked Stein how she could sleep at night if Donald Trump won, to which she responded that she would have trouble sleeping if either of the two major candidates won.
Stein congratulated the movement behind the Bernie Sanders campaign after one of his supporters, who is currently undecided, asked the Massachusetts resident for a direct appeal for her vote.
A registered Democrat who said she was leaning towards supporting Stein asked her about a tweet from April during a Democratic debate, directed at Hillary Clinton.
Running mate Baraka’s positions were even less known than Stein’s, so the town hall and much of America learned the human rights activist is a grandfather who says Fannie Lou Hamer is his hero.
The network had Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and his running mate Bill Weld on two different CNN town halls.