)Briefly speaking with PEOPLE while on the phone with Gaetz, Nestor says: “Matt is not my biological father, but he raised me as his own son when I came from Cuba after my mother’s death.”Afterward, Gaetz said that he "appreciate[d] your passion" but then asked Richmond if he was saying none of the other representatives had non-white kids. FLORIDA Representative Matt Gaetz revealed on Thursday he has a 19-year-old “son” who he’s raised with him in the Sunshine State. )Six years ago, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz says, he met the young boy he now calls his son.Nestor Galban was 12 and had just arrived from Cuba, where he’d grown up and where his mother had recently died of breast cancer, Gaetz says. Many pointed to his views on immigration more broadly. On Thursday, Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, 38, caused something of a stir when he tweeted a selfie of himself and a young man.
He re-frames the matter, saying, “Our relationship as a family is defined by our love for each other, not by any paperwork.”The two-term Republican congressman surprised many with his Thursday announcement that he’s a parent, though he hasn’t adopted 19-year-old Nestor: “Our family’s defined by love”“He’s always been a role model in my life,” Nestor says, rattling off a quick list of lessons learned: baseball, cooking, English. I am not interested in moving at a snail's pace. In a characteristic slam, one user tweeted: “Matt Gaetz using Nestor to score political points or to show he is not racist is disgusting.”“We’ve talked about the fact that college is the time in your life when you have the most free time but you can have some of the most daring consequences if you don’t manage it well,” Gaetz says.Nestor, he says, “is my son in every conceivable way, and I can’t imagine loving him any more if he was my own flesh and blood.” Recalling those early days with Nestor — including a scene he paints of the two playing catch not long after the boy arrived to the U.S. — Gaetz warns that he might start to choke up.Geatz did not formally adopt Nestor (and he declines to discuss Nestor’s relationship with his biological family now). The distance, Gaetz says, is “far enough away and still close enough.”He says he was motivated to speak out about Nestor because, in his view, he was being unfairly maligned after his viral argument with Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.Nestor, Gaetz says, has taught him patience — the kind any parent learns."Many of you know @mattgaetz & I have an unlikely friendship. “As you can imagine, I was triggered when (to make an absurd debate point) a fellow congressman diminished the contributions of Republicans because we don’t raise non-white kids. “For all those wondering, this is … Well, I have.”So Nestor moved in with them — “a modern family,” he told the outlet. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) announced Thursday that he has a "son," Nestor Galban, a 19-year-old Cuban immigrant. “People are dying as we talk. She shared family photos of Nestor through the years, including of his high school graduation earlier this year, him on Christmas Eve in 2013 and him with Gaetz and his grandmother and grandfather. It just wasn’t the right time in middle school and high school to subject him to politics,” Gaetz says now.He says that, except for an interruption during Nestor’s junior year after Gaetz and Nestor’s sister broke up, Nestor has basically lived with him since moving from Cuba.“And as I’ve talked to him throughout the day,” Gaetz says, “he’s very taken by the fact that he has a lot more followers on social media now.”Detailing the timeline, Gaetz tells PEOPLE Nestor lived with him for around four years after first arriving in Cuba before going to Miami for his junior year and living with his biological father: “Then he turned 18 [and] it was easier for him to just move back with me.” (Gaetz declines to specify when exactly he and Nestor's older sister broke up.
“My son and I owe no explanation about our family to the blue-checkmark brigade.”“As you can imagine, I was triggered when (to make an absurd debate point) a fellow congressman diminished the contributions of Republicans because we don’t raise non-white kids,” he wrote. GOP Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz told People Magazine on Thursday that his newly-revealed 19-year-old “son” is not actually his legally-adopted child because he “did not formally adopt” him.. Gaetz surprised social media users Thursday afternoon by revealing he has a Cuban-born “son” named Nestor Galban after a fiery exchange with Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) Now that Nestor is grown he’s made his own choice to enter the spotlight.