They’re a part of the mix. Firewalls, Proxies, WAF (often built into a proxy), IPS, AV, and whatever intelligence systems one may like work together to do their tasks. Visibility of traffic is important as well as the management burden being low enough. I used to have to manually log into several boxes on a regular basis to update software, certs, and configs, now a majority of that is automated and I just get an email to schedule a restart if needed.
A reverse proxy can be a lot more than just host based routing though. Take something like a Bluecoat or F5 and look at the options on it. Now you might say it’s not a proxy then because it does X/Y/Z but at the heart of things creating that bridged intercept for the traffic is still the core functionality.
There was an event the next day where he gave a speech to a friendly crowd and by comparison he sounded like a spry well organized guy half his age. Hardly a mention of that out there though. I’m not a big fan of his miliqtost, half steps on a lot of things but it’s playing the game with what cards are available and having decades in political office gives you the experience to do it. I’m largely willing to write off the debate as being so flustered with the torrent of bullshit coming from Trump that it put him off balance.