One of the least pressing yet most irritating aspects of Donald Trump’s US is the reintroduction of a bunch of people we never thought we’d have to hear from again. Men (and it’s mostly men) who, under previous administrations, were banished to the far corners of our collective consciousness, have come roaring back – this week on Air Force One. I’m referring to Brett Ratner, film director and subject of multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, all of which he denies, who was comprehensively cancelled in Hollywood but has reemerged this week to – what are the chances? – accompany the US president to China for his summit with Xi Jinping.

If Ratner, who was dropped by Warner Bros in 2017, is not an obvious choice of travelling companion for the US president, he does at least fit the mould of men with appalling reputations alongside whom Trump stands a good chance of looking almost appealing. Many in Trump’s inner circle, prior to being plucked from the mire for possible advancement, had been on the brink of cancellation – take your pick from Pete Hegseth and Robert F Kennedy Jr – such that a sketchy past appears less of an oversight when it comes to Trump appointees and more of a qualification.

It isn’t Ratner’s first toe back in the water, of course: earlier this year, he released his documentary Melania, a film for which the term “authorised” seems inadequate given the $40m (£30m) Amazon paid for it, and a sum which, one assumes, took the edge off any disappointment the Trumps felt about the film’s abject failure. (As the kinder among reviewers delicately put it, Melania “underperformed” relative to the high acquisition cost.)

The main thing about Ratner’s invitation to tag along this week is that it is in keeping with Trump’s essentially trolling nature. Having the director of the Rush Hour movie franchise, one of Trump’s favourites, on Air Force One en route to a “high stakes” diplomatic meeting is exactly the kind of middle finger Trump enjoys giving to the sorts of people who get upset by, for example, low-end programming at the Kennedy Center. (There’s no suggestion Ratner will be meeting the Chinese president; instead he is hitching a ride with Trump to scout for locations in China for Rush Hour 4 – Air Force One as rideshare is presumably part of the joke). We can only be grateful, I guess, that Trump’s favourite film isn’t Lethal Weapon, or it would’ve been Mel Gibson on Air Force One.

The joke is one of lurid unsuitability, with vague echoes of that time Dennis Rodman – another figure unleashed on us by Trump, via Celebrity Apprentice – sent himself to North Korea as a self-appointed envoy and practitioner of “basketball diplomacy” to the horror of Barack Obama’s state department. Or, let’s see; Trump’s appointment of Linda McMahon, a “former wrestling executive”, to the role of secretary of education and a woman so flagrantly unqualified for a job with power over the lives of millions of American children that one can only assume Trump found it funny.

Or, on the subject of the Kennedy Center, the deeply weird additions Trump made to the board of trustees, which included not only Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, but – a nice touch, this – Susie Wiles’ mother, Cheri Summerall. (See also: the appointment of Charles Kushner, convicted felon and father of Jared Kushner, as ambassador to France.)

Back to Ratner, however, who, it may be useful to remind ourselves, was the subject of an investigation by the LA Times, which included this, about the actor Olivia Munn: “[She said] that while visiting the set of the 2004 Ratner-directed After the Sunset when she was still an aspiring actress, he masturbated in front of her in his trailer when she went to deliver a meal. Munn wrote about the incident in her 2010 collection of essays without naming Ratner. On a television show a year later, Ratner identified himself as the director, and claimed that he had “banged” her, something he later said was not true.

There is one bright counter to the examples of the worst people in the US being restored to glory by Trump, and that is the fact that, very occasionally, the process runs in reverse. Prior to his association with Trump, erstwhile New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was not only a local and national hero, but appeared to be a man positively brimming with sanity. Last week, when he received last rites while in intensive care in Florida, obituaries writers got going on every sordid detail of the long descent into ignominy of a man absolutely ruined by his association with Trump. (Giuliani has since recovered). A warning – god willing – to all the others who are, at present, so eagerly throwing in their lot with the president.

• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist