Question about btc price

Hello,

I noticed a lot of BTC critics point to price manipulation by whales. Supposedly whales can just wash trade and set the price to whatever they want, then dump it on their unsuspecting victims.

So my question is, if whales can just set the price to whatever number they want, why not just set it to 100k or 200k or 2M?

this criticism of "whales manipulating the price to whatever they want so they can dump it" doesn't seem to make sense. help a dummy like me out here.