You don't need a paid promotion for it to be a pump & dump
The price was pumped up with news, a tweet by the president, social media and main stream news attention, and as you said, a bunch of robinhood trader idiots.
What makes it a pump in dump is the way insiders bulked up their equity holdings ahead of the announcement and the way the debt holder profited off the price action.
It's who profited (and how they profited) off the news/attention and the way it affected price action that makes it a pump & dump.
The chart speaks for itself and it was obvious from the start how it would turn out because it was obvious it was being run like a pump & dump.
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