Andrew Bolt has hit back at Malcolm Turnbull after the Minister for Communications accused him of being “unhinged” following his leadership speculation.

Mr Bolt, who accused Mr Turnbull of conspiring against the Coalition by dining with Clive Palmer, has criticised him for “kicking this story along” and “fanning the story that suits him”.

“Malcolm Turnbull’s wild abuse of me proves he is either selfish or deceitful,” Mr Bolt wrote in the Herald Sun today. “But either way he’s disloyal.”

Mr Bolt said Mr Turnbull’s response allowed him to receive “exactly the coverage he’d expect”.

“It borders on the demented to string together a dinner with Clive Palmer and my attending, as the Communications Minister, the launch by a cross-party group of friends of the ABC and say that that amounts to some kind of threat or challenge to the Prime Minister,” Mr Turnbull told reporters on Monday.

“He’s advertising he’s the man with the mates who count,” Mr Bolt wrote of Mr Turnbull. “And in trashing me he’s saying Abbott’s mates don’t.”