No, Donald Trump did not pay off the mortgage of a man who fixed his flat tire

In an oft-told tale, former President Donald Trump thanks a stranger who fixed his flat tire.

"How can I repay you?" Trump asks, according to multiple Facebook posts that detailed the story.

The stranger, who was described in the posts only as "a black man walking by," replied by saying his wife always wanted flowers.

"A few days later, the black man’s wife gets a beautiful bouquet of flowers with a note saying, ‘Thanks for helping me. By the way, … the mortgage on your house is paid off.’"

The posts describe other instances of Trump’s generosity: giving $25,000 to a U.S. Marine who was beaten in a Mexican prison; sending $10,000 to a bus driver who saved a suicidal woman’s life; and chartering a private flight for a rabbi’s critically ill son. 

Those, we found, had some factual basis. The flat tire story, however, did not.

These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The flat tire story has been repeated several times through the decades. And it has been frequently debunked.

The story was shared as far back as 1996 in Forbes, our review of Nexis news archives found. The details, including the location of the flat tire and the message Trump sent the good Samaritan, have changed throughout the years. Forbes did not name the purported tire fixer.

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In 1997, The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, asked an assistant at Trump’s New York office about the rumor. "We’ve heard the story," the assistant said, according to the article. "No, it isn’t true." 

There are reasons to believe the other anecdotes in the post. Trump in 1988 used his private jet to help transport a critically ill child to a hospital, Snopes confirmed. In 2013, he gave $10,000 to bus driver Darnell Barton who talked a suicidal woman off a Buffalo, New York, bridge, a number of news organizations reported. In 2014, Trump gave $25,000 to U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi after he was imprisoned in Mexico.

Trump didn’t pay off the mortgage of a man who fixed his flat tire. That is False. 

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.