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Senator Tim Scott - who briefly ran for president - is reportedly being considered to be Donald Trump's running mate.

The Republican Party's only black senator, Tim Scott launched a bid to become its candidate for the 2024 presidential election, but later withdrew from the race.

"Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb," the 57-year-old South Carolina senator said last year.

Now out of the race for the Republican nomination, a contest that seemingly has only one outcome at the moment, could Mr Scott be in the running for another job?

In a recent interview with Fox News, Mr Trump himself name-dropped Mr Scott when asked about potential vice presidential picks.

"I called Tim Scott this week, because a lot of people like Tim Scott," Mr Trump said. "I called him, and I said: 'You are a much better candidate for me than you are for yourself'."

A Trump ally told Sky News' sister outlet NBC News that Mr Scott is seen as a potential asset for a Trump ticket both on a policy front and in helping to cut Democratic margins, particularly with Black and Hispanic male voters.

What's more, they added, the two are "compatible" with each other and don't have a "forced" relationship.

Mr Scott has avoided being overly critical of Mr Trump.

But after Mr Trump's comments on the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville - that there were "very fine people on both sides" - he said the then-president had "compromised his moral authority to lead".

Only black politician to ever serve in both houses

Mr Scott's political career has seen him make history on various counts.

Not only is he the sole black Republican in the US Senate, he is also the first black person ever to serve in both chambers of Congress.

Only 11 black people have ever served in the US Senate. Currently the other two are Democrats Cory Booker (New Jersey) and Raphael Warnock (Georgia).

He started off as a Democrat, however, when volunteering on the congressional campaign trail for Mark Sanford in South Carolina's 1st district in 1994.

Inspired to run for a seat on Charleston's County Council, he approached the local party, but was told to "get in line", he revealed in an interview with Politico.

Instead he ran for the Republicans and in 1995 became the first black Republican to hold any political office in South Carolina since 1902.

He worked in insurance and as a financial adviser before entering politics full-time.

In 2009 he was elected to the South Carolina statehouse, two years before getting a seat in the House of Representatives in 2011.

The following year when South Carolina's senator Jim DeMint retired, the then state governor Nikki Haley appointed him as his replacement.

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Campaign 'never about race'

Mr Scott presented himself as an antidote to the traditional rhetoric around race in the US.

He refused an invitation to join the Congressional Black Caucus in 2010, saying: "My campaign was never about race."

Instead he chose the Women's Caucus because he is the "product of a powerful single mother".

In a speech in 2021, he said that while he has "experienced the pain of discrimination… America is not a racist country".

At a Black History Month event in February last year, he said: "I'm not here to suggest that things could not get better and I'm going to work every single day to make sure that all Americans play on a level playing field.

"But today is not 1865 ... We have made tremendous progress, and it's time that we as a people celebrate the progress we are making."

In a Politico interview he said he experienced "more racism" at times from his black friends - for not "meeting the expectation of the groupthink" at school.

He also revealed he has been stopped by police officers guarding the Capitol who didn't know who he was.